Scholarly Publishing

Which conference to attend?

Think, Check, Attend

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.

1. What is the research field of the conference?
2. How frequent do the conference occur?
3. Who will be attending the conference? ~ Academics; ~ Administrators; ~Counselors; ~ Educators; ~ Social Scientists; ~ Researchers
4. Which conferences do others in your communities of practices attend?
5. How many people get together at this conference?
6. How likely is it that a paper might get accepted for the conference program?
7. How is the conference viewed by your colleagues or peers?
8. Are abstracts released as published abstracts?
9. Are paper submissions sent out for peer review?
10. Will conference papers be published in proceedings afterwards?
11. Why are you considering this conference?

Selecting a conference

Evaluating conferences

It is just as important to evaluate which conferences to focus on as it is to evaluate the integrity of journals.

Evaluate conferences - use Think, Check, Attend

Featured

Attending conferences

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.

• There are several ways in which articles in conference proceedings may be accredited. Both hinge on peer review.
• Check if conference proceedings gets published and if you will get recognised for your work.
• You might need to submit the completed paper for pre-conference peer review. Some of the papers are then selected for presentation and publication.
• Other conferences invites post-conference submission for peer-review.
• If this is allowed, get your conference paper or poster more visible after the conference by posting links to it on your blog and social media profiles.

Read about the value of conferences

Publication counting

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

• editorials
• book reviews
• letters to the editor
• non-scholarly, non-research articles
• articles in newspapers and popular magazines
• reviews of art exhibitions, concerts and theatre productions; medical case histories or data reports, that are not full journal articles
• commentaries and brief communications of original research that are not subject to peer review
• articles designed to inform practitioners in a professional field, such as a set of guidelines or the state of knowledge in a field)

• papers that appear only in a volume handed out or sold to conference participants (e.g. “Program and Abstracts” books)
• invited papers
• papers presented at minor conferences, workshops or seminars that are not regarded as having national significance
• conference papers assessed only by an editorial board
• conference papers accepted for presentation (and publication) on the basis of peer review of a submitted extract or abstract only
• one page abstracts or summaries of poster presentations )

Core Rankings

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)

• Australasian (audience primarily Australians/ New Zealanders)
• Unranked – no ranking decision yet
• National – (runs primarily in a single country, Chairs from that country – not sufficiently known to be ranked)
• Regional – (similar to National – may cover a region)

Rankings are determined by citation rates, acceptance rates, visibility and track record of the hosts, the management of the technical program, etc.

Professional sites

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.

Conference directories

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.

Directories and databases (Library subscriptions)

Commercial conference directories

Conference papers/proceedings

You can find conference papers and conference proceedings within the following databases.