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POSTING TYPE: Dialog

Posted by: Herbert Jack Rotfeld

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Submitting formal written papers to conferences seems to be a relic of another century.

At the registration desk of my first ��������� educators’ conference, I was handed a thick book containing all the papers accepted for presentation in the days that followed. At the American Academy of Advertising meeting the following spring, the papers collection was sent to all members a month or two after the meeting. The Association for Consumer Research had a hardcover book. For all the conferences, manuscripts were submitted to a referee process similar to one for journal articles. Afterwards, journal article references included citations to those books. Universities treated conference books as  publications.

Over time, this changed. Universities stopped accepting conference books as publications for purposes of promotion and tenure or annual reviews. The submissions are still editorially reviewed like journal articles, but almost all presenters now take the option of publishing only a short abstract in the book of a paragraph or two with “references available on request.” As a result, no one reads the actual papers besides editors, reviewers and (maybe) session chairs. No one can read most papers because they aren’t available. Those attending a session would ask to be sent a copy of the paper, though the most common reply is that “the paper is being revised for submission to a journal and is [therefore] unavailable.”

The result is an illogical a disconnect between research submissions, presentations and conference books.

Even when copies of papers are handed out or the books include a complete manuscript, no one presents a full paper in all its detail. Aside from the boredom factor of reading out loud, there isn’t enough time. The talks that are only drawn from the paper that was reviewed. Presenters’ slides invariably include references, saying things such as “Cooper and Hofstadter 2015,” but seldom is seen a presentation that provides the full citations of these notes to allow audience members to look them up, unless it is one of the increasingly rare papers in the conference book. The abstract in the conference book reduces the paper and 20-minute talk to a couple of short paragraphs, with “references available on request.” Sometimes conferences allow submissions of abstracts instead of papers, which gets confusing for reviewers asked to assess treatment of theory, coverage of literature, and quality of data analysis when they are not provided.

The quality of conferences and participants’ records of the experience would be improved by having a relationship between what is reviewed, what is presented, and what is distributed in the now-electronic conference books. Bringing all of this into the realities of the twenty-first century is overdue.

First, instead of a research paper written in the style of a journal article, submissions should be scripts and visuals of a proposed 15–20-minute talk, or even a storyboard. This submission would also include all slides, plus a complete citation list of all references mentioned in the script or in slides. Since submissions today are all via web systems, former barriers of printed forms no longer exist. Of course, authors would not be required to read the script submissions at the conference, but what is reviewed would be closer to the presentation content than a paper by laying out what will be said and what will be shown on screen.

Then the conference chairs and editorial referees would evaluate the scripts and visuals as research contributions. Comments on accepted papers would give guidance for revising the talk. Authors would have a more directed idea of what they can say in the time allotted, plus give feedback on the research that might help with eventual submission of the work to journal. A secondary value of this approach is a reduction in verbiage reviewers must wade through to indicate to conference chairs what items should be part of the conference and what should be rejected. As stated above, this is not a binding statement of what will be read, but having a script causes a focus on the talk.

Finally any conference books, now online or a thumb drive, will at the very least include the presenters’ full scripts as revised, with full citations for all references mentioned during the talk. The visuals can either be charts or figures inserted into the proper points of the published script or in appended PowerPoint slides or videos in electronic publications. All authors would be required to include full citation to past work mentioned instead of available on request. For any faculty at the rare campus that still views conference books as publications, the content would look the same as a full article, just in script style. Most important of this last step is that it is limited enough for authors to not violate copyright requirements for eventual journal publication while making the conference books a full repository of what was presented. Conference attendees, plus other organization members who obtain the books, would own a better record of the meeting.

And then, maybe, journal articles could once again cite a presentation.