Recently, the Board of IBPSA has noted that there is a call for papers for an International Conference on Building Simulation, to take place in Rome in January 2019, which is not the IBPSA Building Simulation 2019 conference – this will take place in September (2nd to 4th). The host of the January event is known to be a predatory conference host and publisher.

Predatory conferences and publications are a relatively new phenomenon that try to take advantage of the pressure on academics and research students to publish widely. They use conference and journal names that are closely related to existing events and publications. They may even have an online submission system, and come back with some perfunctory review results. However, their key objective is to capture a registration or publication fee. In the end, the unsuspecting ‘delegate’ may end up travelling to a foreign country only to find out he or she is alone in an otherwise empty hotel venue. Research students are a high risk group, as they may not note irregularities in submission and review processes and other clues that an event is not right.

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to stop predatory organizations from capitalizing on the good name of existing conferences or journals. The best protection is to make sure our community is aware of the phenomenon and to spread the word. For Building Simulation 2019, make sure to follow the official announcements via IBPSA and do not allow yourself to be sidetracked by a similar name and location.