More than 1000 international scientific conferences per year
The scientific conference is a strength for universities, higher institutes and research centers in the academic classification
Critics of Arab scientific conferences: fake research centers and profitable conference organizing institutions
Publish a website all conference alert More than 300 scientific conferences are being held in the new year 2019, and the conferences vary according to specialization, events, and sponsors.
The English-language website includes coverage of approximately 134 countries, including 12 Arab countries, in 10 main specialized fields: economics and business administration, education, health and medicine, engineering and technology, mathematics and statistics, law, religious studies, social and human sciences, physics, and life sciences.
These conferences are divided according to geographical coverage and availability of participation into 3 types: national, regional, and international. In terms of funding for researchers and their attendance at the conference headquarters, there are two types: free and paid, which includes travel tickets, hotel accommodation fees, food, and registration fees for attending the conference. This is in the largest universities and higher institutes in the world.
All scientific conferences require that a research paper be submitted at least 3 months before the deadline for submission, for screening to take place after that at a rate of 3 months at most, and then those accepted are invited to present their research papers at the conference. This is in contrast to a scientific symposium, which can be attended without research participation. It only requires early registration to reserve a seat among the attendees at the symposium.
Conferences are held to commemorate a specific occasion, such as the International Day of the Arabic Language, for example, or World Environment Day, etc. They may be held as international competitions, such as scientific conferences held at the level of Saudi universities, and in the end they may come as a cooperative workshop between several universities or in the university itself.
Officially, universities and higher institutes seek to participate effectively in these conferences that are at the official level, as this increases their strength in the monthly global academic rankings, such as Shanghai, Qs, and Thomson Reuters, which depend on the volume of research published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Scientific conferences, along with scientific symposiums, grants for postdoctoral researchers, fellowship grants, and research for university graduates, are considered forms of strengthening universities in scientific research, which is considered a standard for progress and renaissance in all countries.
Many institutions have been established around the world that are concerned with organizing scientific conferences and exhibitions by contracting with universities and higher institutes. On the other hand, independent research centers have been established that organize conferences as well, but some of them are fictitious, according to a report prepared by the magazine Arab geographical sciences The court issued by Tunisia under the title (so that scientific conferences do not turn into corrupt trade).
Conference organizing institutions have faced harsh criticism for being the reason for the transformation of conferences from the scientific side to the profit side. In an article by Dr. Khaled Al-Halibi (from Saudi Arabia) - the general supervisor of Advisor website - He says:
The purpose of scientific conferences in the past was to provide scientific information and scientific research, and what researchers had achieved, and the participant was not paid a price for that, but at least the participating scientific research was selected, and the inviting party took care of accommodation and other things, and the distinguished scientific work was then honored. …But today, we (especially the Arabs) have moved to a material shift that has nothing to do with science at all. Rather, how much will I earn financially from calling for a scientific conference? Thus, we now have institutions that hold conferences as scientific in exchange for a subscription. I wish it had been symbolic, but rather commercial. What I learned has arrived. Recently it decreased to ($1000) per person, and the reason is that it is in exchange for the bag for the conference, and some expenses such as: a meal or coffee, so fear God with knowledge, O merchants... Where are we heading and where are we going, when we see that science has become a profitable trade? Who is the buyer unfortunately? Of people's gullible minds! And I say it in all frankness: Yes, simple-minded people. Now we cannot lie and claim and say that we have certificates or have become scientists or been invited to conferences as we used to do in the past. We must expect that there will be someone asking about these fake certificates and courses, and now the commercial conferences that accept What is submitted to it in exchange for the money that will be obtained from participants in such commercial conferences, which have lost their scientific name.
In Egypt, academics expressed their dissatisfaction with the deviation of the course of scientific conferences from their academic objectives, and they have become more like a media appearance that seeks fame, amid the absence of scientific conference topics such as discussion and dialogue sessions, despite the presence of 363 research centers in Egypt, and those conferences estimated at hundreds annually did not produce any innovation. Properties for rampant diseases in Egypt According to the opinion of an academic in his statement to a newspaper Egyptian pyramids In early November 2018.
Are we witnessing a solution by universities and higher institutes to this dilemma that has begun to worry researchers, or is trade continuing unchecked at the expense of science?
