China Scammers Defraud Academics With 4,600-Yuan Fake Conferences and Publications
Updated
Updated · South China Morning Post · Jun 22
China Scammers Defraud Academics With 4,600-Yuan Fake Conferences and Publications
1 articles · Updated · South China Morning Post · Jun 22
Summary
4,600 yuan was the fee Wuhan lecturer Liu Xia paid to submit a paper to what she later discovered was a completely fabricated conference with a fake organizing committee.
The scam exploited a common career pressure in China: researchers need conference papers and event attendance for professional title evaluations, making promised indexing in databases such as Compendex especially persuasive.
Instead of a recognized conference proceeding, Liu received a paper printed in an obscure journal that could not be found in major academic databases, leaving it unusable for formal evaluation.
Complaints are growing over a 'grey industry' targeting academics, extending Chinese scammers' reach from traditional victims such as young jobseekers and older people into the research community.