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"Predatory" company uses Canadian universities to sell shoddy conferences

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Omics International is still marketing junky science conferences in Montreal and Toronto this month despite a U.S. judge’s order to stop “deceptive” promoting of its conferences and academic journals.

The company has a long record of publishing any research papers for a fee. This allows underqualified academics to pad their credentials with fake research papers and gain promotion. Companies that do this are known as “predatory” publishers.

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But a US District Court judge fined Omics more than $50 million on March 29 and made a sweeping order prohibiting the India-based company from “misrepresenting” its conferences and journals.

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So far, the company is showing no signs of change. It is running a series of 18 small but pricey conferences in Toronto and Montreal in the next few weeks on topics ranging from cosmetology to medicine. Registration fees range up to US$1,399 for two days.

Omics claims to offer “world class” speakers and conferences. The reality is that it will let anyone speak about anything for a fee. We proposed a speech on growing poison ivy as a food crop, and the company accepted the paper immediately for its food security conference.

Omics says the paper was “accepted after being reviewed by a committee.”

Omics operates some 3,000 conferences worldwide each year, under the name Conference Series.

Meanwhile two of Canada’s major research universities have been drawn into the company’s questionable strategy.

The conference chair and keynote speaker is a professor named Christopher Bryant, and the Omics website repeatedly lists him as a professor at the Université de Montréal and the University of Guelph. (He retired in 2012 but is still an adjunct professor at both.)

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His signature and the names of the two universities are also on the acceptance letter approving a lecture on poison ivy as a food crop.

But he said he has little idea of what Omics is doing in his name.

He wrote by email: “How strange. I participated in one of their conferences last year, and they asked me to be co-chair for the one in Montreal. I’m going to ask the woman who manages all this to see what is happening!”

Asked whether the signature on the letter was his he replied: “I guess. If I remember it was because they asked me for a signature that they could use when they sent messages to colleagues and graduate students to acknowledge receipt and acceptance of their Abstracts for the conference.”

Late Wednesday, after Omics did not answer his emails, he asked the company to withdraw him from the conference.

This highlights a problem Canadian universities have been slow to address: How to deal with academics who publish in predatory journals or help out with predatory conferences and fake journals. The use of a prominent university’s name and reputation lends legitimacy to predatory companies.

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Guelph responded sharply: “He is an adjunct professor in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, an honorific title that recognizes his relationship with researchers in that school.

“As per University of Guelph policy, Mr. Bryant should not be using the University of Guelph name or identifying himself as a representative of our University at any external remunerative activities.

“Now that the University is aware of this particular event, this policy will be drawn to Mr. Bryant’s attention.”

Guelph says it does not endorse the conference.

The Université de Montréal sent a statement saying that “we were not aware of this situation.

“Université de Montréal cannot accept to be associated with this kind of practice, either as an institution or through the actions of one of the members of our community. Université de Montréal is a major research university and we must preserve its reputation for excellence and integrity, which is fundamental to the pursuit of our scientific activities and to the confidence of the scientific community and the public,” it says.

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It adds that “we talked to the professor today and it appears he was not aware the organisation was not up to scientific standards. We are sad and sorry that a member of our community was caught in their net but glad he has now withdrawn from the conference.”

The university says it takes the issue of predatory journals very seriously.

At the University of Saskatchewan, medical professor Roger Pierson says he too often sees universities look the other way because professors have academic freedom.

“This would run right up against any notion of accountability or quality assurance at the level of the university.

Our university system needs to be held to account,” he wrote in an email. “The individual profs need to be accountable as well.”

Omics has not responded to requests for comment.

On a side note, Ottawa naturalist Dan Brunton says poison ivy is food — just not for humans. “Chipmunks … find poison-ivy to be a particular treat and store the seeds for winter snacking,” he writes.

tspears@postmedia.com

twitter.com/TomSpears1

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