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I am thinking of registering at a conference organised at Said Business School by a company in Lithuania called Acavent.

The fee is 200 pounds which is a bit on the expensive side and the scientific committee a bit random. However overall this could be a well intended conference to give some 2nd hand researchers also a forum.

Some red lights are however there, such as emphasising souvenirs and tourism. The local faculty is completely unaware of the conference. A month in advance the conference schedule is still unannounced.

Not sure what to make of it.

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  • This is indeed a subquestion of the "is a conference legit or a scam" Mar 24 at 13:35

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To me at least, this does indeed raise a lot of red flags. I googled the company out of curiosity, and found a similar thread to your's on ResearchGate. In that thread, a person who claimed to be working for that company responded to the question. To cite part of her response:

Hello, I am working at Acavent and if you have any question, please write to me. We organise events in EU countries. We have a big team who are working in organising an event for you. At the same time we cooperate with journals and reviewers. Please respect our work and if something is wrong or you want to comment - firstly come to us. We always try to provide the best service - from reviewing papers to publishing at the journals. Acavent organises conferences for years and the only time any event was cancelled, it was during COVID19. Instead of onsite conference, it was held online.

A lot of that sounds like pretty generic wish-wash ("we cooperate with journals and reviewers"), and neither the level of English proficiency nor the request to contact them privately about concerns instead of seeking an open forum does inspire great confidence. While there is no guarantee that an event organized by a private for-profit company is predatory, my personal recommendation would be to avoid it, and attend more established events organized directly by researchers or research organizations.

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