Poll: Is it really worth academically attending conferences?
December 1, 2013 3 Comments
I know it’s a strong start, if it’s really worth academically attending conferences, but I really wonder about it. This is another one of the themes that surprisingly emerged when I started my career as a university professor: Submit dissertation / papers to international conferences is required to complete your research resume; and now I realize that in the future it will be necessary for obtaining further citations. Take that!
The process generally agreed to disseminate the result of a research paper is as follows:
- First, doing the research.
- After that, preparing a draft of the manuscript.
- Reviewing it with your peers and/or department.
- And then, sending it to a conference.
- To finally publishing a paper in a journal indexed on a first level database, as Web of Knowledge (Thomson Reuters), Scopus (Elsevier) or EBSCOhost.
This process makes sense and serves a clear purpose of testing the research paper, although the process may well be extended to more than 2/3 years since having the research finished. And it looks like as if designed to measure to insecure people who do not trust themselves or their work, and who needs to be given the nod everywhere possible before disseminating their results.
Also I haven’t very clear that all conferences are equal in terms of relevance, or at least there is no quality assurance or databases attesting them, as with journals. So it would be the same attending one or the other whenever international, organized by a reliable university or institution, with scientific committee and peer-review process.
Finally, before moving on to the poll, I also want to mention that you must be careful with the publication of proceedings; as Editor-in-Chief I’ve seen a publisher reject an article because it appeared on the website of an old conference, even though the rules of the journal allowed it.
Well, today I’m very interested in your opinion about the conferences you attend. This world is also changing, and each time I don’t feel like travelling and convincing people who don’t even read my work.
* It can be chosen several answers.
**Comments are highly encouraged.
How to publish in journals 
I think that the major reason to attend international conferences is to network and maintain visibility as a researcher in your field. Also, good conferences are a way to stay in touch with what people are doing in different research areas, identify potential colleagues to work with in future projects and meet them directly. Finally, in some cases there is a possibility for a good publication through special issues. However, generally I found that small, specialised conferences are better value for researchers in terms of publication potential and networking. So, I usually go to one big and one small.
Attending conferences is for the large majority of the teacher just fulfilling a legal condition for promotion or staying on a certain degree. There a few ones who have something to share, their findings, or to be validate by others who they trust. In spite of a large business (leisure, tourism etc.) being in a conference will induce the feeing of being. Also for few ones it is a way to exchange ideas and consolidate solid groups in the matter.
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