Update 2012-06-18: Here's a translation, thank you to my anonymous translator! I've made some minor changes, if I have anything very wrong, please let me know!
2nd update: fixed two minor problems
He who plunks down money gets made professor (From Hürriyet Newspaper 12 December 2010)
WASET is a
very stylish site, also it impresses with its content: links with international
refereed journals, international conferences that organized almost in every
subject... But if you delve into the issue a bit, you learn that this site only
shows as if your paper was published in a journal which it is not, and it also shows
like as if you attended the international conferences, which you didn't. He or she who plunks
their money can add them to his/her CV and becomes a associate professor or a
professor.
Actually
what is done is simple: lets assume that it is time for your associate
professorship or professorship. There is no way that it will occur
automatically, you have to attend conferences or publish papers in refereed
journals, so you can add these to your CV. Although there are 25.000 refereed
journal in the world, you are not the type who bothers him/herself, you
benefit enough from the culture of “is not there an easy way to do this, bro'?”
The “World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology” which
can be found at http://waset.org is such a site. When you get
into it, you come across a stylish, serious page. Information given, offered
programs are kind of that can't be disregarded. This site, allows you to add
“articles published in international refereed journals and international
conferences” to your CV for a fee.
FAMILY
TROUBLING TÜBİTAK
The site
is backed by former science teacher Cemal Ardıl, his daugter Ebru Ardıl, and his
son Bora Ardıl is also helping him. These names are very interesting. Science
teacher for twenty years Cemal Ardıl introduced himself as Dr/PhD, and because of
this TÜBİTAK [The Scientific and
Technological Research Council of Turkey] chair Prof. Nüket Yetiş opened a investigation about him in ethical
committee. After that because of using the name TÜBİTAK without permission, she
gave them a notarized protest certificate. Also TÜBİTAK withdrew support from
Çanakkale 18 Mart University until bogus conference, bogus journal problem
could be solved. But they continued with their activity. Guess who is the one with most
articles in WASET? Cemal Ardıl with 46 articles is the one with most articles.
But we couldn't reach the Ardıl family. Probably because they know that we are investigating, they closed the “contact us” section of the site. All other methods we used for reaching them also failed.
First who pointed out this issue is A.
Murat Eren from NTV Science Magazine. Eren, who is also a academic, gives interesting information about site's
scope: “It is a widely known fact that there is a disproportion between publication and
citation counts in Turkey, also how academics gets on staff by which kind of
publications in provincial universities (small, country universities). This
site allows people to publish by money, in fact who couldn't publish their works
in another way (channel, course). Academics, who collects a few hundred euros,
easily publish in WASET, without bothering himself/herself with complicated
scientific process. Who pludges the money, climbs the stairs of academic life
two by two. If published thousands articles, organized tens of conferences are
thought, it can be seen that it is a really profitable business. When everybody
wins, unfortunately science is losing.”
Again from
the Eren's article, we learn that many of those who applied to the WASET
originate from countries such as Bulgaria, India, Pakistan, Morocco, Egypt, Iran,
Georgia, Azerbaijan, United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, or Indonesia.
Some of the academics who are working on Turkey's universities are also regulars on the WASET. Common characteristics of these countries are that their hardship
(poverty, etc.) in contribution to science, scientific thought and science
world! “For instance” says A. Murat Eren, “a academic who published 14 article
in WASET's so-called journals in Mathematics still serves in Uludag University”.
We found the academic Prof. Ahmet Tekcan, who Eren mentions. He said to us, as
soon as he learned that WASET was doing such things, he disengaged (dropped all
relations) from it: “I have 14 articles since 2007 in WASET group journals and
most of them are joint studies which are done with associates from my department.
After hearing the news about WASET, I stopped sending articles to it. In the end
nobody wants to be tainted (stained) by his scientific works. As I see most of
the people who has papers with this group are not aware of the news about it.”
When we
ask about the difficulty of publishing 14 articles in the field such as Mathematics in one
year, he said that it is possible with well-founded basis (foundation).
However, we couldn't find anyone within the most reputed mathematicians who can
publish 14 articles in one year.
ENFORMATIKA
PHASE
WASET
actually is a new site. Before it, there was a site with Enformatika name. But,
academic member of İTÜ Prof. Tayfun Akgül, who writes under the nickname “Conik
Author: Piref H. Ökkeş” in Matematik Dünyası (Mathematical World Magazine),
wrote an article in the magazine titled “I've sent a paper to bogus
conference”. Piref Ökkeş, heard about an international conference in his major
is going to be organized in Istanbul, also leading scientists from the world
are going to attend to this conference. After sending an email to the one of
the renowned scientists in list, he learned that this person don't have any
information about the conference. Thus, it is emerged that this conference is
totally fake.
But Piref
Ökkeş, didn't settle with this. After a while, he sent an article with totally
a fabricated title and content to the site. After an article was accepted and
declared to be a fake article, the site was deciphered and it was hurriedly closed.
Actually it only changed its logo. The new logo, which can easily be guessed, is
WASET. “After this news” says A. Murat Eren, “probably WASET logo will change
too”.
When we
were researching about this issue, we repeatedly called YÖK (The Council of Higher
Education in Turkey) president Prof. Yusuf Ziya Özcan and sent our questions to
his answering machine, but we couldn't get any answer from him.
TÜBA
can't keep track of everything
TÜBA
PRESIDENT PROF. YÜCEL KANPOLAT
I
didn't know anything about WASET internet site. After your notice I researched.
But I have to confess tha, I don't intend on keeping track of that thing.
Also it is out of the question for TÜBA (Turkey Sciences Academy). People who
takes this kind of actions, shouldn't have any claims about science. Society is
also not criticizing (blame, condemn, denounce) this kind of people. I am sorry
I don't have time to look into the question 'Is there any relation to
publication explosion?'”.
TEN
PERSONS WITH THE MOST PUBLISHED ARTICLES IN WASET
Cemal
Ardıl (46)
Ahmet
Tekcan (14)
Melih
Turgut (14)
Atilla
Akpınar (12)
Basri
Çelik (12)
Osman
Bizim (10)
Serkan
Narlı (8)
Betül
Gezer (8)
Ali
Eryılmaz (7)
Emin
Özyılmaz (6)
Posts
Great job, thank you. You may also want to indicate that TÜBİTAK is the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey.
ReplyDelete"...apparently about mock conferences and Turkish scientists."
ReplyDeleteI think this sentence implies that all Turkish scientists practice fraudulent science and appreciates these kind of mock conferences. One should also note that this case is brought to nationwide attention again by Turkish scientists. So, this above overstatement should be weakened.
No it does not. Stop over-reacting.
DeleteI'll be glad to correct this, the Google Translate result was, um, exceptionally difficult to read.
ReplyDeleteYes, that's correct. Google translate has improved significantly for Turkish in the recent years, but it is still far from being 'OK'. ..and thanks for the correction.
DeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine who reads your blog sent me this link. Thanks for the translation. I am the person who did the research and wrote the original article about WASET, which led to this publication. I just wanted to let anyone who is interested that the original article here can be found here:
http://meren.org/blog/bilimsel-ahlaksizligin-gri-mecralari/
Following short article is a summary of the former one which was published in NTV Science and was referenced from Hürriyet:
http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/id/25165267/
A little note: the person who published 14 math articles in one year was defended by his Dean in Turkey after this news, and I was accused of slandering his colleagues and their department in Uludag University, because I was a servant of 'some people' who were 'jealous' of their success and had 'ulterior motives'. Ironically, when I searched his name in my WASET archives it turned out that this Dean himself had publications under WASET, as well.
It is not only Uludag University. I have unbelievable examples from all over the country. These people occupy 'departments' all together. They very well know what they are doing, and they protect their territory by hiring only people who share the same perspective on ethics and science.
This type of frauds are simply choking the academia in Turkey. While inflating the number of publications that are coming out of Turkey each year increases, the actual contribution of Turkey to international science is essentially zero, except a couple of lucky/heroic/isolated efforts. Quantitative measures to assess the importance of a scientist are open to abuse. Lack of regulations and ethics make under-developed countries like Turkey extremely good at abusing those indices, and therefore they remain under-developed.
Best,
I have worked in North Cyprus for nearly 20 years, and I am so fed up of professors with fake qualifications. My university has dismissed up to 10, sometimes straight away, sometimes after a semester. Sometimes these are Turkish professors who have left their diplomas on a bus, but also many are Americans who inflate their certificates with each new position.
ReplyDeleteNow, with the Northern Cyprus allowing PhD holders exemption from the military, they will being to churn out inferior doctorates, not worth the paper they are written on.
Unfortunately, the way that the promotion system works in most Turkish universities is that the staff have to collect points, from journal publications and conference attendance, towards their promotion through the ranks from Assistant Professor, Associate Professor (Docent) to full professor. Some universities will not award the PhD until the author has a science citation publication.
I have only just found out that even Science Citation Index publications can be dodgy, and charge 500 dollars to put your paper in!
Uff, what can be done.
Thanks to Turnitin I was able to show my boss that one Masters student was trying to pass off a thesis that was 85% plagiarised as her own work.
I am so vigilant, but most teachers here don't care. It is common to cope all homework as well as in exams.
Unfortunately, Turnitin is not infallible, though it does help. Paraphrasing does not show up. What we should be questioning is how all these 'papers' and conferences are supposed to improve a teacher's ability to teach. They don't, period. In fact, some big-name researchers are lousy teachers,whose teaching often consists of giving students reading lists, whose interests outside their narrow fields are non-existent. In the modern world of academics, this is an unfortunate development, imposed mainly by European and American clerks,a bureaucratic culture constraining an academic one. All this nonsense about accountability and quantification--good teaching cannot be 'counted' by totting up papers and conferences, it can only be felt. The final arbiters are students
ReplyDeleteI have also been fooled once! I paid a hefty price (600 Euros) back in 2009 to attend at one of the conferences organised by WASET. I was a student then - and I was shocked by the horrendously poor organisation of the conference. The chair of the session where I was supposed to present did not show up - it was just a nightmare. And trust me - regardless what the main topic of the conference is, whatever abstract or paper you submit will be accepted. The one I attended in 2009 was very techy topic but I submitted one on 'environmental economics' issue and it was accepted. In their website it says my paper has been published - but it has never gone through any peer review process or typesetting process.
ReplyDeleteI wish someone can organise an investigative journalism and expose these people (Cemal and co)!
IAENG Conferences are also terrible and mock. IAENG Conferences are fake and bogus. I was in a fake/bogus IAENG Conference in 2009 and no chairman existed. I did not receive review for my low-quality paper that intentionally sent to IAENG. I believe that IAENG conferences are highly bogus and fake. By the way, today, I received many spam emails for IEEE Elections. Are IEEE Elections also fake. I got several emails from one Professor Vincenzo Piuri that wants to become IEEE Presidents by spamming everybody on this planet.....
ReplyDeleteI was in an IAENG Conference and everything was terrible. In the Secretariat it was a 9-years old girl. Probably the daughter of the Organizer.
ReplyDeleteDo not go to IAENG and IEEE garbage conferences. Do not give money to the Fake IEEE and IASTED bastard-conferences
I am a PhD student and, unfortunately, my collegue and I have been victim of this fake conference.
ReplyDeleteWe were looking for a conference about vaccines and vaccination and we decided to join the ICVV 2014 in Rome, the "International Conference of Vaccines and Vaccination" organized by Waset. When the congress program was available (only less than one week before the conference) we noticed that the list of abstracts and posters did not reflect the topics we were interested in and that were promoted in the flyer on Waset website. We tried many times to ask an explanation but, obviously, they didn't answered (the only way to contact them is by mail).
After that we looked up for other conferences organized by Waset in the same period and city. What we noticed was that there were many conferences with different names and topics planned on the same day and at the same place of the ours.
Unfortunately, we have wasted money that we would have wanted to put in our education.
I am a PhD student and recently I have been victim of WASET, too. I attended a conference in Prague, called "ICOAFS 2015 : 17th International Conference on Organic Agriculture and Food Security".
Deletehttps://www.waset.org/conference/2015/07/prague/ICOAFS
I started to be suspicious when I read the program: very different topic, TOO different. When I get the conference, I entered in a quite small room (a space that can contain max 50 people) and I realised that something was wrong: the conference was actually many conferences at the same time. I just thought it was a lack of professionality, I hadn't realised that they were criminals.
Being suspicious, when I came back to my university I googled them and discovered dozen of article and blogs just like this.
Salvatore
Announcement by Cadi Ayyad University - Marrakech - Morocco
ReplyDeleteMoreover it is in 2 languages : Fr - Eng.
It has extra importance as the 1st one by a university on its web site against WASET ....
For years none of the universities in Turkey has done this in spite of lots of warnings sent to them.
Moreover they have sent hundreds of academics to WASET .... conferences ;
they have sent 500.000+ euros to international bank accounts of .... Ardil family.
None of these academics has told his/her WASET .... conference story yet.
Some of these academics have gone to WASET .... conferences several tens of times and
traveled the world with .... Ardil family.
(Note that
“….” = “beep !”
It is a common sound used in Turkish tv’s instead of some original words.)
-------------------------------------
Actualités de l'UCA
Communiqué / Mise en garde
Publié le 20-05-2014 sous RECHERCHE
L'université Cadi Ayyad informe l'ensemble des chercheurs et partenaires qu'un "faux" congrès international sur les ultrasoniques utilise le nom et la réputation de l'université à travers un membre chercheur (Pr. Ahmed Chitnalah, FSTG) sans autorisation écrite..
L'adresse Web du "Faux" congrès est https://www.waset.org/conference/2015/03/miami/ICU
En plus, ce site Web n'indique pas la liste ou logos des partenaires organisateurs, comme il est coutume dans toute manifestation scientifique. Il n'y a non plus aucune adresse de contact.
De ce fait, l'UCA décline toute responsabilité vis-à-vis de ce congrès et met en garde de traiter avec ce genre d'acte.
---
Cadi Ayyad University inform all researchers and partners that a "FAKE" International Congress on Ultrasonics is using the name and the reputation of the university through a faculty member (Prof. Ahmed Chitnalah, FSTG) without written permission ..
The website link of the "FAKE" Congress is https://www.waset.org/conference/2015/03/miami/ICU
In addition, this website does not indicate the list or logos of organizing partners, as is usual in any scientific event. Also, there is no contacts.
Cadi Ayyad University disclaims and warns of dealing with this conference.
* http://www.uca.ma/site/news.php?id=204#.VDD5zZU9LIU
-------------------------------------
First newspaper article in English about WASET :
ReplyDelete-----------------------------------------------
* http://ottawacitizen.com/technology/science/science-and-the-death-of-peer-review
TOM SPEARS
Tom Spears
Ottawa Citizen (Canada)
Published on: October 8, 2014
Last Updated: October 24, 2014 6:07 PM EST
Science fiction? Why the long-cherished peer-review system is under attack
-----------------------------------------------
Thank you for this thread.
ReplyDeleteIm planing (was planing) to go to Dubai in Januari for WASET ICPEPE 2015.
So the question is: Is there any point to go there? Or do I just feed a system that is bad?
My cousin have moved there for work and I was hoping to stay with him and to some touristing in combination of the conference.
Do I, or worse my co-authors have any thing to lose by publishing there? Except that we published in a shitty conference. Will our reputation be lower to have this publication?
Experience is the most effective way of learning :
ReplyDeletepay for that conference ,
go there ,
take photos and capture video of especially the owners of WASET ,
talk with them ,
learn their names and who they are and
where they live and where they work and
where they are students and what they study ,
learn where WASET is and what WASET is and
whether WASET exists ,
take photos and capture video of session which your article is listed in ,
talk with others there ,
talk with session chair ,
note their opinions about WASET ,
then share all these and
other documents (bill , bank documents , attendence document , etc )
in internet with your comments.
WASET website includes more than 40.000 articles.
Strange but true : almost none of the owners of these articles shared
their experience with documents yet.
Be the first one.
İ think your way of thinking is good and can give accurate answer. And some owners of articles have high impact scitation number articles.
DeleteI too was a victim of the WASET scam. I attended the poorly conducted conference in South Africa and my paper was said to be included in an " international, peer reviewed journal". Imagine my surprise when I found out this was a scam and my paper which took lots of hard work and effort is floating around in a journal which is obviously FAKE. If anyone knows how I can get my paper retracted please advise. WASET needs to be shut down
ReplyDeleteWell WASET is published in by professors even in the US. College evaluation committees need to become saavy to this behavior. The practice also casts doubts on the ethical credibility of these professors.
ReplyDeleteProfessors are doing this from all over the world, including at US colleges and universities.
ReplyDelete