(17 May 2018, Oxford and Dubai) Think. Check. Attend, a new initiative, is announced today by Knowledge E, a Dubai based information and service provider to the academic community. Based on Think Check Submit—launched by a coalition of several organisations across the scholarly communications community in response to mutual challenges for publishers, service providers and universities alike—the new initiative follows the same structure and pattern and provides a set of easy, practical steps for academics all over the world who want to check the suitability of a conference before submitting an abstract or agreeing to attend.
While each initiative was developed independently, the two have mutually endorsed each other and both campaigns encourage scholars to use the services as a complement to disseminating academic research via journal publishing and research conference activities.
Researchers who want to determine the credentials of a conference are guided through a process whereby they will ‘Think’ about the risks posed by the increasing number of conferences lacking rigour, ‘Check’ the conference against criteria shared by legitimate academic events and ‘Attend’ only if the conference passes the checks and is deemed trusted.
Philip J. Purnell, Director of Services at Knowledge E welcomed the move saying: “We regularly field questions about the prestige and suitability of conferences and Think. Check. Attend seems a natural progression to the corresponding Think Check Submit for which Knowledge E also provided the Arabic and Persian versions.”
Matt McKay, Director of Communications at the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers said: “Think. Check. Submit. was launched in 2015 to help researchers understand their options, and the key criteria they should check before making an informed decision about where to submit their research. We now warmly welcome the Think. Check. Attend campaign as a sister initiative designed to help researchers recognise the characteristics of trusted conferences and events.”
The announcement in full is here.
