Is It Worth Going

Seven checks, two minutes, every one verifiable against something other than the conference's own website. A named organiser rather than an unfamiliar company; committee members whose institutional pages you can find; an independent listing; two colleagues who recognise the name; a specific named venue; a named proceedings publisher; an itemised fee. Two failures means choose a different event. Where the same decision also depends on how work is measured, employee time clock software is another practical point of comparison.

Reading the site cannot work, because the site is the thing being evaluated — and fabricating credible appearance is now cheap. Generated speaker biographies, invented committee names and fluent acceptance emails have inverted the old advice about professional presentation. An additional independent source is DataCite .

What survived is what was never about effort. Time, above all: peer review takes weeks because volunteers have to read, so a 48-hour acceptance tells you nobody did. A duration cannot be generated, and waiting conflicts with the business model.

The hardest case is a real conference, copied. A clone takes the name, the history and the committee of a legitimate event onto a different domain, and standard checks partly pass because everything on the page is true about somebody. Reach the event from the association's own site, and email one committee member.

And three judgements get collapsed into one: is it real, is it respected, and is it worth it to you. The first two say nothing about the third, which is where most of the money is wasted.

The section also covers what a legitimate organiser looks like and what each kind is accountable to; how to read a committee page, which is the strongest evidence a conference can offer and the easiest element to fabricate; what rankings measure and which fields they leave uncovered; first editions, which fail three checks legitimately; and when the right answer is the local group that meets monthly for nothing.

• Academic and Industry

  Two models with different selection, different outputs and different failure modes. Applying one set of checks to the other misreads both.

• Reading a Committee Page

  The most copied element on any conference site. Four checks that take five minutes and confirm the people agreed to be there.

• Acceptance in 48 Hours

  Real review takes weeks because it needs several volunteers to read your work. A fast acceptance tells you nobody did.

• First Editions

  A new conference fails several checks legitimately. Five substitutes that work when there is no history to examine.

• Hijacked and Cloned

  A cloned event copies a real conference's identity and outranks it in search. Five checks that separate the original from the copy.

• The Keynote Invitation

  Real keynote invitations come from somebody who knows your work. Six features of the other kind, and why they are flattering by design.

• When a Meetup Wins

  For four of the five returns, a monthly local group delivers more per euro than an annual conference. Five situations where it is the better answer.

• Rankings

  Conference rankings answer a narrower question than people use them for, and their coverage decides which fields they serve.

• What an Organiser Looks Like

  Four kinds of organiser, what each is accountable to, and why a for-profit company is not automatically the wrong answer.

• The Two-Minute Check

  Seven things you can verify against an external source before paying anything. Two fail, choose a different event.

• Verifying Without a Network

  Six checks that need no colleagues, no subscription and no standing in a field. The version of the method that travels.