How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

Also from India, a scammy journal: http://www.ijma.info/index.php/ijma/index

Someone had posted a link to a paper in the latest issue of this journal, here in HN a couple weeks back. It was titled "A Novel Scheme for Data Encryption Technique" ( http://www.ijma.info/index.php/ijma/article/view/2391 ).

I could not understand why such a journal would exist and why people would publish papers in this. I did not know that having conference papers/journal publications was now a requirement for B.Tech/M.Tech. degrees in India. It wasn't so when I got mine - or maybe just my Institute did not go in for such ridiculous requirements.

Existence of such conferences and Journals is a direct and predictable outcome of such a requirement. Vast majority of Undergrad/Grad students in India earn a degree not because of interest or even ability in their chosen fields, but by knowing how to beat badly drafted exams. If you force these people to "publish", it is just another hurdle to pass, mostly by paying a few thousand Rs. The requirement for "industrial training" during summer has been bypassed the same way for ages.

Sigh.

Edit: To other fellow Indians here: Do you know if there is a regulatory body one can approach against such scammy conferences and journals? I understand that such bodies tend to not be at all willing to help, but I'd still like to pursue this matter. Failing this, maybe we should put together a list of such journals and conferences and have these sent out to colleges and universities as a way to blacklist them?

I don't know how conferences work but isn't it the purpose of a conference to discuss a certain paper? Aren't sessions planned in which a paper is taken and dissected? I can very well imagine that papers like this would be quickly discovered and discredited. Sure, it may not happen before the conference starts but at some point either before or after everybody sits down to discuss the paper it should be glaringly obvious.

IANAScientist ...

I am not sure I understand what you're saying.

I know that getting a paper in a conference like this is not an achievement. However, I know lots of students who do not know this. I know faculty in Engineering colleges who do not know this. I know many people who actually pay money to get published in such conferences because they really believe it's an achievement.

Hence, this expose to improve awareness.

I am not sure how I have poorly represented the academic system and myself by doing that, so could you elaborate?

Maybe there should be merit given to people that self-select themselves to be the 'mystery shoppers' of the academic world.

Perhaps you could get a job where the deciding factor to hire you rather than someone else was your ability to get x papers of utter nonsense in academic journals/conferences. If you think about it there are people doing this already...

Most conferences are supposed to have a selection process (in most cases a "peer review" process) in which all submissions are sent to multiple reviewers who are experts in that area, and only papers which are deemed "acceptable" by a majority of the reviewers are published. Usually this means that the paper should be relevant to the conference, should have results that are worth publishing, and should have something new - something that hasn't been done before.

All of this is supposed to happen before the paper is accepted for publication. The proceedings of top conferences in most fields are, in my opinion, more important than the actual conference itself.