The Think, Check, Attend checklist includes nine questions to ask about organisers and sponsors of conferences, six questions about the agenda of the conferences and the editorial committee, and four more about the conference proceedings.
As a first step, try completing the Conference Checker form.
Ensure that you protect yourself and publish only in reputable and recognised conferences. You may have limited time and budget at your disposal. Therefore always evaluate carefully if the conference you are considering is right for you. Some guiding questions are presented below.
It is just as important to evaluate which conferences to focus on as it is to evaluate the integrity of journals.
Attend conferences as a method of staying current and testing new work. You can also network with colleagues in your research field. Presenting at conferences have the added benefit of personalising your work and providing a face and voice to it. You can use it to test how your work is received and use the feedback received to build your work further before aiming to publish in journals and other forms of academic publishing.
Optimising Your Academic Career by
Chapter 13, pp..98-104 addresses topics such as why attending and participating in seminars is important for early career researchers, what can be gained from attending and presenting at conferences, how to engage in networking and follow up and should you publish in conference proceedings.
Graduate Study for the 21st Century by
Chapter 9, pp. 195-213 addresses topics such as What to expect from conferences, why you should attend, when you should attend, which conferences to attend, the selection processes for conferences, submitting abstracts, preparing a presentation, seminar papers as practice, what to bring to the conference, the presentation itself and dealing with comments and feedback, etc.
To have a conference publication counted and recognised as an academic research output in Australia, the following definitions are worth noting.
For the purposes of ERA, research is defined as the creation of new knowledge and/or the use of existing knowledge in new and creative ways to generate new concepts, methodologies, inventions and understandings. This could include synthesis of previous research so it produces new and creative outputs.
Publication data collected for the Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) publication component recognises four traditional publication categories: (Eligible publications are defined in the HERDC specifications for the given year)
A1 - Books (as authored research)
B1 - Chapters in Scholarly Books
C1 - Articles in Scholarly Refereed journals
E1 - Conference publication - Full paper - Refereed
Not counted
The CORE Conference Ranking provides assessments of major conferences in the computing disciplines. The rankings are managed by the CORE Executive Committee, with periodic rounds for submission of requests for addition or reranking of conferences. Decisions are made by academic committees based on objective data requested as part of the submission process.
Conferences are assigned to one of the following categories:
A* - flagship conference (leading venue in a discipline area)
A – excellent conference (highly respected in a discipline area)
B – good conference (well regarded in a discipline area)
C – other ranked conference (venues meet minimum standards)
Rankings are determined by citation rates, acceptance rates, visibility and track record of the hosts, the management of the technical program, etc.
If you follow a particular research community or professional association, these bodies often promote events and conferences to their members.
Some of these bodies are listed below.
There are vetted tools to help researchers identify recognised conferences in their respective fields.
Further there are conference portals and -directories created by companies with potential commercial interests in creating the lists and promoting the conferences. Always evaluate information sources used to make strategic decisions carefully.
You can find conference papers and conference proceedings within the following databases.
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