Bogus British Company “Accredits” OMICS Conferences

Notorious open-access publisher OMICS International operates a scholarly conference division called Conference Series LLC. I learned recently that a London-based corporation called The CPD Standards Office has “accredited” all of OMICS International’s exploitative conferences.

A linked logo now appears on all of OMICS’ conferences. The logo reads “Accredited CPD.” Clicking on the logo brings one to a page like this one [PDF] called the “CPD Standards Factsheet.”

In actuality, the facts are that OMICS has paid this firm to accredit its bogus conferences. Any accreditation agency that grants accreditation to OMICS International or its divisions has no value as an accreditor.

This is confirmed by the CPD’s website which says,

“The CPDSO accreditation services do not have a pass / fail philosophy, our friendly assessment team will work with you to achieve CPDSO accreditation successfully.”

Indeed, all a firm has to do is pay, and the accreditation is granted. If this agency accredits OMICS and its conferenceseries.com brand, then surely it will accredit anything.

It is clear why OMICS International / Conferenceseries.com wants to emblazon its conference websites with the bogus CPD logo. It tricks people and universities into thinking the conferences are authentic, when they are really just a predatory means of exploiting university travel funds.

In fact, this is how CPD markets its automatic accreditation services to conference organizers such as OMICS.

I recommend that researchers avoid all journals published under the OMICS International umbrella and avoid all conferences organized by conferenceseries.com.

Moreover, I recommend strong skepticism towards anything “accredited” by the CPD Standards Office.

By: Jeffrey Beall
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Source: Scholarly Open Access

Comments:

Manfred Raida says:

October 13, 2016 at 7:51 PM

Just checked “conferences” starting in 3 days have no program up, no speakers, quite late. Many photos of speakers are presented in an offending way, either stretched or squeezed, same people show up again and again. Some “conference” are run in parallel, great if organizers can do this :-). Universities should be warned not to allow spending money for these bogus events.

Lalitha Pasam says:

October 14, 2016 at 1:30 AM

Jeff,

what about CME and CE accredits for OMICS events???

PS: http://diabeticmedications.conferenceseries.com/
http://www.dentalcongress.com/europe/

Thanks
Lalitha

Jeffrey Beall says:

October 14, 2016 at 6:26 AM

Good question.

The Philosopher says:

October 15, 2016 at 4:33 AM

Dear Beall – “INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVANCED RESEARCH IN BASIC ENGINEERING SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY” http://www.ijarbest.com – SCI indexed ?

Jeffrey Beall says:

October 15, 2016 at 5:01 AM

You yourself can check here. I do not see it appearing in SCI.

Marco says:

October 18, 2016 at 9:08 AM

The (sad) thing is that CPD is a genuine organization that has done some useful stuff and actually has an important role in continuing professional development.

Somewhat interesting, however, is that according to the CPD Standards Office, conference series LLC “…is currently under CPDSO investigation”
https://www.cpdstandards.com/?sfid=690&s=Conference+series+LLC

Jeffrey Beall says:

October 18, 2016 at 9:53 AM

Thanks for the link. I am happy to see they are re-considering. However, an accreditation agency should not make such blunders. They are supposed to be the experts and do proper vetting. It appears they completely fell asleep at the wheel here, or the prospect of earning money to “accredit” the many hundreds of OMICS conferences was too much for them to resist.

Marco says:

October 19, 2016 at 10:03 AM

Remember that this is OMICS. It is possible they never accredited any OMICS conferences, but rather that OMICS requested it, and CPDSO is still investigating. Just like people who have been asked to give a presentation or be part of the Editorial Board have seen themselves listed as presenting or Editorial Board member well before they responded (or after, and even if their response was negative).

tekija says:

October 18, 2016 at 12:41 PM

Good grief, I did not know that Finland has annexed Texas and UK

http://www.conferenceseries.com/finland-meetings/

Marco says:

October 19, 2016 at 10:06 AM

All your base are belong to Finland!

Wolfgang Muß (= MUSZ or MUSS) says:

October 20, 2016 at 7:02 AM

‘LONDON, Finland’
( to be found below the header-line(s)

Upcoming Finland Conferences
Finland Conferences 2017 )

for sure only was a unique “misspelling [ Freudian slip] for “Helsinki” ! (:-))

Conference Series Ltd
19th Nano Congress for Next Generation
August 21-22, 2017 Helsinki, Finland

missrosalindh says:

October 20, 2016 at 4:55 AM

I wouldn’t say the CPD Standards are a bogus company personally – Google are actually partnered with them and one would think the ‘owners’ of the world wide web would be wise to a scam! Perhaps an oversight to support Omics on the part of CPDSO?

MC says:

October 24, 2016 at 2:05 PM

Yes, google owns the internet. Finally, a reasonable comment on this blog.

Ed says:

October 21, 2016 at 5:52 PM

I think you might want to write about the ConferenceSeries event that accepted in three hours a gibberish paper generated with iOS auto-complete, and perhaps contact Christoph Bartneck of the University of Canterbury, NZ, who “authored” the work. Two relevant references:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/22/nonsense-paper-written-by-ios-autocomplete-accepted-for-conference
http://www.bartneck.de/2016/10/20/ios-just-got-a-paper-on-nuclear-physics-accepted-at-a-scientific-conference/ and per