2.6 Publishing In Conferences

In the previous unit you learned that the academic conference is one of the major channels for scientific discourses. The publications out of the academic conferences, seminars, symposiums, workshops, congresses and similar academic events are commonly known as conference proceedings. In such meets authors usually submit papers out of their ongoing (not finished) research. The authors in scientific conferences submit full-text papers to the conference organizers for considering inclusion in the academic programme of the conference. The organizers usually arrange peer-reviewing of all submitted papers. However, sometimes presented papers don’t get peer-reviewed as these are submitted by invited speakers – who have considerable professional or academic experience. After reviewing and necessary revisions presented papers are published after the conference, which is popularly known as conference proceedings. Some conference organizers publish conference proceedings before starting of the conference, which is known as pre-conference proceedings. Some other organizers prefer to publish conference proceedings after completion of the conference, which is known as post-conference papers. In pre-conference proceedings, authors only get chance to improve their manuscripts based on feedbacks received from the paper reviewers. In post-conference proceedings, authors get chance to improve their manuscripts based on feedbacks received from the conference participants, discussants, observers and session chairs. Nowadays, conference proceedings are published in combination of three modes: (i) Printed Volume, (ii) CD-ROM or USB Flash Drive, and (iii) Online on the website. Sometimes, conference organizers tie up with publishing companies for publishing printed or online conference proceedings in a form of an edited book. Publishers distribute this edited book widely and add an ISBN or ISSN number for unique identification of book title. In online platform, conference organizers develop a dedicated website, where every conference paper may have separate abstract or full-text contents. Web-based conference proceedings are either accessible through open access mode or toll-access to only subscribers. Some of the popular conference proceedings series are listed below, which are available to their respective subscribers as well as paper contributors in conferences:

  • Proceedings.com providing extensive catalogue of international conference proceedings available through books trade channels20.
  • ACM International Conference Proceeding Series21 published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
  • IEEE Conference Proceedings22published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
  • American Chemical Society (ACS) Conference Series23.
  • Procedia24 (Elsevierpublishingsolutions.com/procedia.asp), published by Elsevier B.V., is an electronic product which quickly publishes high quality conference proceedings in over 20 subject categories, e.g., Agriculture and Agricultural Sciences Procedia (ISSN: 2210-7843), Procedia Engineering (ISSN: 1877-7058), Procedia Social and Behavioural Sciences (ISSN: 1877-0428), etc. Every title of Procedia has a unique ISSN number and is available through SciVerse ScienceDirect portal. Each online issue of a Procedia publishes accepted peer-reviewed papers of a specific conference, and dedicated on a specific subject area.

There are a few open source and commercial solutions available to conference organizers for efficient management of scholarly publishing activities, such as electronically acceptance of papers and abstracts, peer review of submitted papers, participants’ registration, post conference proceedings and posting papers in a searchable format, and other tasks of conference management. All these solutions are availed by thousands of academic event organizers every year in over 100 countries. Most popular ones are:

  • Open Conference Systems25 – an open source software produced by multi-university initiative Public Knowledge Project (PKP) – is a free web publishing tool that helps in creating a complete web presence for scholarly conferences. OCS an integrated tool for creating a conference website, sending call for papers, electronically accepting paper and abstract submissions, posting conference proceedings and papers in a searchable format, editing papers after peer review, and registering conference participants and allowing post-conference online discussions, besides many other functions helpful to conference organizers.
  • EasyChair.org offers similar functionalities to conference organizers in a centralized server, where conference presenters can register and submit their full-text papers. Its online solution helps in performing key conference management functions such as accepting paper and abstract submissions, peer-review and web publishing of accepted papers.
  • OpenConf.com offers similar functionalities to conference organizers in acentralized server as well as to localized institutional websites maintainedby the conference organizers. Its online solution as well as downloadablesoftware tool helps in performing key conference management functionssuch as accepting paper and abstract submissions, peer-review and webpublishing of accepted papers.


Last modified: Thursday, 25 March 2021, 10:39 AM