INMIC 2009: Are multi-topic conferences worth it?

IEEE INMIC 2009 is being organized once again, this time by the folks at MAJU and UET, Taxila:

IEEE INMIC is held every year and INMIC 2009 will be the 13th in the series. INMIC has become Pakistan’s flagship technical conference with a broad scope, thereby inviting interest of a large audience. The conference targets research presentations by academic and professional researchers, and also includes a series of tutorials, enabling participants to learn about the latest trends in technology. Research contributions are expected from the participants, covering various disciplines under IEEE’s domain, including technical papers, panel discussions, tutorials and project exhibitions. For all submitted papers, the review criteria include significance of the problem, novelty, clarity, completeness, and accuracy.

As a venue for research, a multi-topic conference like this one is necessarily going to have substandard work: researchers with good work aren’t going to publish here because the audience will not be able to fully appreciate their contribution, and the related scientific sub-community (who would cite their work) aren’t going to be in attendance and therefore won’t be aware of the research. A Google scholar search of citations for this conference shows an abysmal citation record: not a single paper in the 13 year history of the conference has managed more than 10 citations. While this Google scholar search may have missed some papers, it is a reasonable indicator of the influence of a conference.

I suppose an argument could be made that there is value in its function as a gathering place for researchers in Pakistan, but if this is really the purpose of the conference, a symposium with invited speakers may be more worthwhile than a parade of poor research. In any case, the scientific community in Pakistan may have now reached a critical mass making these multi-topic conferences somewhat obsolete. Thoughts?