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comments on references in a presentation

At the recent annual Marketing & Public Policy Conference, I was on the program as the discussant for one session. Obviously, the conference planners made a mistake, or maybe too much time had passed since the American Academy of Advertising stopped such wastes of time realizing and that (as these linked references explain). Admittedly, some people get travel money from being on the program in any form, though there are more useful and creative ways to accomplish this (e.g. "" gives one). There were so many chairs who also presented papers, or other open slots, discussants were not needed to get people program space.

As it turned out, the session chair was a no show, so I did both roles. To take the job seriously, I thought I should say something. None of the authors sent me their papers in advance, which is just as well, since no one present could read them either. Only abstracts appeared in the conference book, along with just about every other presentation with five or six exceptions. This omission, in turn, forced a realization, which became my comments.

So this is what I said.

In the slides for one presentation, as was comment for every other presentation at the meeting, many statements would end with a reference to authority, a citation written in journal style: "(Amalek 2005; Gaon 1989)" The slides were pulled from the paper, and this is how the manuscript would add authority. One presentation at my session did it 9 times, and the last one did it for 18 references. One presenter had 27 of these in body citations, including 7 in the implications list and one as a footnote to a chart.

The problem is that no one in the room read the manuscript. No one would read the manuscript, since it wasn’t in the conference book distributed electronically the day before the meeting. Everyone could request the references from the author, assuming that you remember to do so, and that the author is willing to send them, provided you even remember how the paper was cited in the presentation. Some other sessions were special topics gatherings, that might be presenting research papers that were not reviewed and didn’t even have an abstract in the book.

So what was Amalek 2005? Why does everyone insist on including materials in the presentations that are not only uninformative, but for all we know could be misinformation, made up fakeries to give an illusion of authority. Okay, back up and assume they are all honest, and maybe some people in the audience will recognize a few of the references since they possess a base of interest in the topic.

I don’t know who started this practice of uninformative references, or why a list of names without full information is felt to convey meaning. But wait, there is an easy solution.

Conference books these days are electronic, so there aren’t any space limitations. Instead of a few paragraphs as an abstract, why not direct presenters to provide their presentation slides along with a full list of references. Then everyone could see the items mentioned in the presentation along with the explanatory information. This would be a simple change that would provide more information for everyone, both attendees and those who get the conference book at a later time.

If the conference doesn’t have a book of the papers and presentations, or if the conference collection is to be distributed after the meeting, presenters would be required to bring copies of a printed list of all articles that would be listed as part of the presentation. If presenters are reminded a mere 20 or 30 times before the meeting to bring the reference list, some might actually do it.

Well, it seems like a solution of sorts to me. Another solution would be if everyone stopped putting up presentation slides that include endless lists of uncertain and indefinite references to authority. But I know that isn’t going to happen.

The hyperlinks above are to Rotfeld 1995; 1996, 2002. Full references available on request if the links don’t work.

Herbert Jack Rotfeld

Auburn University Alumni Professor
Department of Marketing