Img Source: hraljournal.com

If you have ever wanted an employer-paid vacation and the ability to chalk up a new publication at the same time, the Global Business & International Management Conference (GBIM) gives you a great opportunity to do so.

GBIM hosts bogus conferences at fun destinations (such as Orlando) and then publishes your paper in its conference proceedings – all for a price of course. What is that price?  Here’s what it says on GBIM’s website:

The price schedule for the Global Business & International Management Conference.

For this payment here’s what you get, according to the website:

Registration Fee includes:

  • Opportunity to present your paper at our international conference
  • Get a copy of the conference proceeding [sic]
  • Opportunity to meet and network participants [sic]
  • Conference materials
  • Breakfast, Lunch, Morning & Afternoon tea Break during the conference
  • Local sightseeing will be introduced for interested participants

The organization also publishes three online, open-access journals:

  • Journal of Human Resource [sic] and Adult Learning
  • Journal of International Management Studies
  • The Journal of Global Business Management

These journals use the author-pays model of open access and assess these charges, according to the website (the charges are the same for all three journals; this statement is from one of them):

“The author of accepted paper [sic] must pay the journal publication fee of $500 U.S. dollars [sic] to publish his/her paper in the Journal of Human Resource [sic] and Adult Learning. The journal publication fee for papers with two authors will be $600 U.S. dollars [sic] and the journal publication fee for papers with three authors will be $700 U.S. dollars [sic].”

This is a Taiwan-based organization. It organizes three conferences a year. The site’s main web page includes large pictures of Disney World and Sea World. It boasts that the “GBIM conference journal is listed in ULRICH’S Directory,” but that is meaningless since Ulrich’s strives to be comprehensive.

This is an especially egregious scam, for they get your money coming and going.

Hat tip: Theresa Hammond.