"New Directions in the Humanities": vanity conference?

[ἠφανισμένος]

Here's the link.

I'm trying to figure out if this is a reputable conference that's worth putting on my CV if I presented. Does anyone have any experience with it? Here are my concerns:

• Abstracts are accepted on a rolling basis. Mine was accepted one week after submission. Other conferences I've presented at begin reviewing abstracts only after the submission deadline.
  
• As someone who submitted an abstract, I can view the accepted abstracts on the organizers' website. Most look like reasonable presentations, but several are badly proofread and/or unintelligible.
  
• Presenters may submit papers to a "community peer-reviewed" journal published by the conference organizers. The proofreaders of this journal do not seem to do a very good job. And "community peer-reviewed" apparently means that those who submit papers review other people's papers with no regard for disciplinary expertise, which of course is meaningless "peer review."
  
• A "virtual presentation" is an option for those who cannot attend the conference in person. Virtual presenters upload a video of their presentations to the conference YouTube channel and may also submit their papers to the journal.
  
• The organizers of this conference also run dozens of similar conferences, some interdisciplinary as well. This has led some to accuse them of just trying to make money off these things and claim that these conferences are jokes.
  

It just seems kind of weird. On the other hand, people from legitimate universities have presented at this conference in the past, and the advisory board includes some people from Harvard, Cambridge, etc. (who do actually list it on their CVs).

So if I present and put it on my CV, will it be laughable?

[lewin]

I clicked on the website. "Payment options" is prominent link, another red flag. It's run by a corporation, not an academic organization. Also, I saw typos.

Assessment based on 2 minutes' thought: This conference looks terrible, especially if you're travelling internationally. Find a better use of your time and resources.

[pinkrobot]

I wonder if you've seen these two threads on the Chronicle forum; they may be useful to you:

• http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php?topic=61660.0
  
• http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,59893.15.html
  

I think it looks like this one might fall into the laughable category, unfortunately.

[ἠφανισμένος]

Yeah, I saw the Chronicle threads already, but thanks. I agree that it looks dodgy. What I don't understand is why (apparently) reputable faculty at well-known universities are on the board of the organization, and why plenty of faculty from UK and US universities are submitting abstracts to the one in Budapest.

[dem]

I actually attended the Faculty of Humanities at this university! The universities in Hungary are not like the ones in the US, they are all public universities with little money. It might be a good conference, but the stakes aren't as high as they would be in other parts of the world. The only university that actually holds very prestigious conferences in Hungary are the ones held by Central European University (CEU). However, this conference doesn't really belong to ELTE, it was just chosen as the venue, and for ELTE standards the website looks awesome, to be honest. So what I am trying to say is that -even though I had many amazing professor teach me there, and the science faculty of the university is extremely extremely strong- ELTE isn't a very prestigious school in US standards (it is the best uni in Hungary, though).