Should I publish a conference proceeding?

I’ve been asking this question several times this year because I happened to be interested in attending conference/symposium/seminar which requires full paper submission. Honestly, I’m confused because I have only been asked to submit abstract for the past conferences I’ve attended. Some of the common fears or uncertainty are exposing too many details in the full paper submission and publishing work in a proceeding rather than a journal. 

Early this year, my supervisor asked me if I would like to attend the InCoB 2012 Conference in Bangkok, Thailand. One student from our group attended the KL conference last year and subsequently published a proceeding in BMC Genomics (Impact factor: 4.21). I wasn’t keen at first but the idea of having another publication in BMC Genomics definitely sounds appealing. On second thoughts, I do have some unpublished data but it will require a lot of time to analyze them and write a full paper. In the end, I decided not to join because I will risk missing my manuscript and thesis deadlines. 

What is a proceeding?

According to “Articles vs. proceedings papers: Do they differ in research relevance and impact? A case study in the Library and Information Science field” by Gonzalez-Albo & Bordons 2011, a proceeding is defined as a paper that was presented at a conference and later adopted as a publication in a journal. It is usually shorter than a journal article and may not be suitable for journal publication. The authors choose to publish the results from proceeding in a journal to increase visibility and citation. In medical fields, only 30-50% of the proceedings were published as journal articles.  It is important to note that a proceeding paper should not be viewed as having lower quality and relevance compared to a journal article. However, it’s undeniable that a journal article is valued more than a proceeding paper in the academics. Proceeding papers are published faster than regular journal article but this has become a thing of the past. 

Why publish a proceeding? 

I found no clear answer until I read this blog in Survival Blog for Scientists. Here’s what I can summarize on the reasons to publish a proceeding:

• Providing a sense of community

• Addressing the relevant people

• Getting one’s work known and acknowledged

Why not to publish a proceeding?

• A waste of time. Why not use the time to write a manuscript for journal publication? 

• Low visibility and citation. Most proceedings are not indexed in databases. 

• Bad for your CV.

How to avoid publishing a proceeding?

We all want our research to have high impact so some of us might not be interested in publishing a proceeding after attending a conference. Some conferences will only select a number of papers based on quality assessment and thus, not all authors faced this dilemma. Even if a conference requires full paper submission, the authors especially students are often not aware that they can avoid publishing a proceeding. How? Easy. If you don’t respond, your paper will not be published!!! Haha I have to admit that this is not a very professional thing to say. Well, you always have a choice not to go! 

Conclusion

It’s clear which side I have taken in this topic. Honestly, I think that a conference abstract will be sufficient serve the purposes of a proceeding mentioned above. Considering the disadvantages of publishing a proceeding, we should invest our time in more useful stuff. In addition, I would like to point out that I dislike the practise of some conferences in publishing the proceedings before the conference is held. I rest my case!