Researchers and scholars often present their work at academic conferences. Like predatory journals, predatory or fake conferences are also on the rise these days. Jeffery Beall explained the predatory conferences in his blog (now archived) by stating, "These are not conferences organized by scholarly societies. Instead, they are conferences organized by revenue-seeking companies that want to exploit researchers’ need to build their vitas with conference presentations and papers in the published proceedings or affiliated journals."
A 2017 study conducted by a group of researchers found that predatory publishers and fake conference organizers frequently targeted the young researchers. This study analyzed a total of 162 electronic invitations received from predatory publishers and fraudulent conference organizers and found that 73.4 % of e-mail received from fake conference organizers invited the recipients to be a speaker and 23.6% asked the researchers to attend the conferences.
This Huffington Post article talks about predatory conference organizers and their operations.
This German video (with English-language subtitles) talks about a number of bogus conferences that were held in many countries by a Turkish fraud who wanted to make money. It shows how a nonsense study gets accepted for presentation in a fake conference when the author(s) pay(s) the submission and registration fees. This video also provides an example of how bogus science articles found on the internet can affect the people with severe illnesses who desperately look for cure.
Think Check Attend is an international initiative that provides guidance to the authors who want to present at legitimate conferences.
The CORE Conference Ranking provides assessments of major conferences in the computing disciplines.The rankings are managed by the CORE Executive Committee, with periodic rounds for submission of requests for addition or re-ranking of conferences.
Flaky Academic Conferences is a blog that highlights the dubious conferences. This blog is owned by Professor David Kaye of Penn State University.
A list of criteria to identify questionable conferences and their organizers has been compiled by the librarians at Salisbury University, MD.