What I believe one problem with a lot of conference papers is: - It is very important to go to conferences, to meet your (international) peers, see what is new

What I believe one problem with a lot of conference papers is: - It is very important to go to conferences, to meet your (international) peers, see what is new, what interesting results have been achieved/are work in progress and to forge the next collaboration So far so good. Now, all academic institution I know of, only allow you (means paying) to attend a conference if you present a paper. I guess this might be universal. So since you want/need to go, a lot of people just write up what the current status about a problem is, and this leads to a lot of half-baked presentations. (of course fraud is something different)