I’ve attended two OMICS conferences, and the organizers gave me a speaker discount. Even at some “legitimate” conferences, it is unfortunately not unheard of to pay registration, travel, etc., as a speaker. Since I am a junior faculty member, I found the OMICS conferences to be moderately poorly run and yet low-cost options for getting some speaking experience under my belt, and several productive collaborations have arisen from them. This is in contrast to the well-known megameetings that are often dominated by several key labs and their offshoots, where junior and relatively unknown investigators may have difficulty obtaining talks or making useful connections. So while I deplore OMICS’ ridiculous journals, their post-conference badgering of speakers to submit papers for fees, and the other questionable practices that Dr. Beall exposes, I think that there may actually be a place for lower tier pay-to-play conferences like theirs that bring junior scientists together. It’s really too bad that OMICS hasn’t done a better job of providing a service to this market.
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