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It was like more than 6 years ago, I was an undergrad senior in a south asian university, we did not have much internet connectivity back then.

I wanted to publish something on a journal/conference to get a feedback on my undergrad thesis (I was curious to know about the quality of my work) and submitted a paper to one of the journals listed on that notorious waset.org.

I was young and novice, above all, I had no idea that people could do such a scam with intellectual issues like "research papers", anyway.

but the thing is that when I search my name on a web search engine (google, duck-duck-go etc.), that biggest mistake of my life still comes up on the first page, I am now near the end of my PhD and looking for an academic/research job. So, I wanted to communicate with them so that I can request them to revoke my paper.

However, their site does not provide any specific contact address/person to whom I can discuss with.

I have no wish to resubmit that to any other place, after 7 years now I can understand that my undergrad thesis work was too "trivial" to be "published".

Is there anyone who is in the similar situation? and is there any way to retract the paper from waset.org ?

any pointer will be greatly appreciated.

Apology: I am feeling very uneasy to share the link of my paper, but their website is provided.

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    Personally (and I don't know how other people would feel), I would be wary of holding a publication in a scam journal against you without further investigation. For all I know, they published it without your knowledge. – Davidmh Jul 31 '15 at 10:50
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    If you consider that the biggest mistake of your life, you're doing pretty well for yourself so far... :P – Mason Wheeler Jul 31 '15 at 14:20
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    @Davidmh I hope people will realize that, because as far as I remember I did not sign any consent form with waset, it was long ago. – ramgorur Jul 31 '15 at 22:23
  • @henning I don't think this is a duplicate of a question about conferences. – David Richerby Apr 21 '17 at 20:31
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I think there is something you can do to help yourself in this situation.

You could contact Google and ask if they would remove this particular search hit from their cache. As a result your paper will not come up when people search your name in Google. Of course your paper will still exist in their server but I think that a major part of the potential damage can be avoided since I would believe that people do not intentionally go the predator publishers website to search anyones articles.

Here are the instructions to contact Google: https://support.google.com/websearch/troubleshooter/3111061?hl=en

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    Reading their removal policies, I'm not sure if an embarassing publication is the kind of thing they would remove. But I guess it's worth a try. – mhwombat Jul 31 '15 at 10:33
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    @mhwombat I think it definitely worth of try. If celebrities get their pictures removed, I guess this should be valid also. Especially in the context of "predator publisher" – arkiaamu Jul 31 '15 at 10:37
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    @ramgorur, if you ask Google to remove this search hit, please let us know whether or not they do so. – mhwombat Jul 31 '15 at 10:44
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    @mhwombat According to Google's policy, it's unlikely that it will be removed because it 1. doesn't violate any laws (unless the fake journal is breaking the law by publishing?), and 2. doesn't expose any personal information other than that which would normally be exposed if you published anywhere else. Furthermore, most other search engines (Yahoo, Bing, etc) will have indexed it as well. In fact, Google will probably re-index it because waset.org still exists and has the journal available via link. – Chris Cirefice Jul 31 '15 at 15:00
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    good idea, I will try this way and will update if anything good happens. – ramgorur Jul 31 '15 at 22:21
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Of course you can try to contact the conference 'organizers', but I am afraid that a scam conference, like waset (which is an anagram for waste), will not revoke your paper.

I would suggest that you leave the paper out from any list that you can control (your website, your university's website, your cv, your google scholar profile, etc).

Try to focus on your genuine papers. As that list grows, the trivial one will become less and less visible.

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  • yes, that's why waset people do not keep any contact point, in the meantime I will try to take the google approach. – ramgorur Jul 31 '15 at 22:20
  • @ramgorur, they were forced to provide a contact point when they registered the domain -- academia.stackexchange.com/a/88367/22768 – user2768 Apr 21 '17 at 13:50
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You can look-up domain name owners. World Academy of Science Engineering and Technolo [sic] is listed as the owner of waset.org, their registered business address is given as 6, Dubai, 28817, AE, which probably doesn't help much, they also registered phone number +971.559099620 and email address waset.org@gmail.com, which might be more useful.

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We all make mistakes, but learning from them is where the value lies.

Add this under notable life experiences on your CV. This way you have the opportunity to explain the situation, and show that you have grown since then. It also shows that you are not trying to hide things, that you can own up to your mistakes, that you have courage, and that you can poke fun at yourself.

The softer skills in life could indicate how well you would fit into an existing team, and that also counts towards your appointability, not just your academic achievements.

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Google ranks results based on an algorithm that calculates the page rank of a page, which is (over simplified) a combination of links to that page and the ranks of the pages linking to it. I can't think that this fake journal would have a very high rank.

Social websites usually have a sky high page rank, so you can try and bury this result in search by creating a public profile on as many social media websites as you can (linkedin, google plus, facebook, twitter, pinterest, instagram, youtube (upload a cat video please), geni, blogger, google scholar, wordpress, to name just a few), and those should quickly outrank this one.

You can create public profiles on forums in your area of research (or any sizeable forum for that matter), as these also tend to have high page rank. I also see some of reviews on zomato when I google my own name, so that could be worth a try.

Last but not least, you can register your name as a domain name, and host a website there with your CV. Typically domains that exactly match a search term tend to rank well for that term.

The key is to use your name, or the name that appears in your paper that you would like to bury.

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I am also in a similar situation. I am a PhD student. I submitted a paper to one of WASET conferences which they had used a name of a genuine top level conference. After I submitted my paper, they accepted within 3 days without any reviews and that made me suspicious. I decided to withdraw my paper after 2 weeks. However, I was surprised to learn from my friend 2 months later that they went ahead and published my paper yet I had withdrawn and did not attend nor pay for the conference. I have written to them almost 20 times to remove my paper but they declined. In short, never submit a paper to WASET, it's a scam for making money through registration fee from unsuspecting researchers.

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    This is interesting but not an answer so far. Perhaps you can emphasize the conclusion that there is not really anything OP can do. – henning -- reinstate Monica Apr 21 '17 at 13:55

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