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I have just started my PhD in Biomedical Engineering 2.5 months ago and started doing some simulations. My hope is that I at least have some publishable preliminary results, and have at least one publication of any sort (be it in a conference or journal) by the end of the year.

I do understand that at this stage it is very likely to be preliminary results, and as such I thought it appropriate to submit to a conference rather than a journal. However, the major conferences in the field I am interested in have deadlines very soon and I definitely won't have time to finish anything to submit by then.

Fortunately (?), I did find another conference much later in the year that I think I will have time to submit something for, but my supervisor did not know of it. I am worried if it is a predatory conference.

However, it is still a conference organised by a branch of IEEE-EMBS, and it has been recurring within the same country every 2 years.

Could I see any other signs that it could be a predatory conference, or just a smaller conference? It doesn't have 'International' in the name. Their previous conferences mostly have papers submitted by people from the same country, but do seem to have a few papers from researchers of reputable universities from their neighbouring countries.

TIA!

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    academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9362/… Does this answer your question?
    – Allure
    Commented Apr 18 at 2:46
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    Congratulations on securing a PhD position. You just started with your PhD, why the rush? There will be plenty of opportunities to present your work in the next four years. It is good to have goals early on, yet they should not overwhelm you.
    – Dr.M
    Commented Apr 18 at 5:03
  • @Allure yes that's really helpful. Thanks!
    – Jae S
    Commented Apr 18 at 5:19
  • @Dr.M Very true!
    – Jae S
    Commented Apr 18 at 5:20

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but my supervisor did not know of it. I am worried if it is a predatory conference.

Putting aside whether it is predatory, this is probably not a good sign for publishing there! :)

Conference quality varies, and is very field-specific. The best thing that you can do at an early stage, before you are aware of the major conferences or journals in your area, is to trust your supervisor's judgment on what conferences they would usually publish in.

From that perspective, I think that "predatory" is a very low bar. Given the situation you describe, you rather want a conference that is not necessarily top/competitive, but which is respected and which will reach other readers who are interested in your work. Often, this can be a workshop or a smaller conference, but it should be one organized by someone you or your supervisor knows, or that you otherwise have good reason to believe is a beneficial venue for your work.

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    The only major caveat to that is that if you're working at the intersection between your supervisors fields and another field, there may be good conferences in the other field that they don't know. I'd hope in that case you have academic support from the other field, giving you someone else to discuss with, but not necessarily. A lesser factor is small conferences that tend to attract attention from a fairly limited geographical area where you're not. They can be very useful, but could escape your supervisor's attention; they're more likely to lead to interesting discussions than citations
    – Chris H
    Commented Apr 18 at 13:08

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