submitting a forthcoming article to a conference call for papers?

[monterio]

Hi everyone,

I'm wondering what you all think about the ethics/propriety of following situation.

There's a conference coming up in my field that is asking for submissions (full papers for blind review), and I have a paper that I've not presented at a conference before that fits the theme. The complication is, the paper has been accepted for publication at a journal. I haven't yet been issued a publishing form to sign, and the paper has not yet been copy-edited, let alone assigned to an issue. In the past, I believe I've seen scholars present on forthcoming work at conferences, but I still have an uneasy feeling. (I should note that the conference is fairly competitive, so it might well not be accepted.)

What do you think would be the best way to proceed? Should I contact the journal editor to ask permission? Or would submitting the as-yet unpublished paper to the conference just be part of how things normally go? FWIW, I'm in a humanities field.

[Parasaurolophus]

I wouldn't. It's one thing for it to be accepted after it's submitted to the conference, but this just seems too late to me.

I would instead cannibalize it into a different but closely related paper.

[Sun_Worshiper]

If it is a giant national conference with thousands of participants, I doubt anyone will notice or care. I'm in a social science field, and I've occasionally seen people present published or forthcoming work at the flagship conferences. It seems pointless to me, more than unethical.

[monterio]

Thanks, Parasaurolophus and Sun_Worshiper. I appreciate your perspectives. I'll give this some more thought (leaning now against trying to submit the paper to the conference). Above all, I wouldn't want to potentially sour my relationship with the journal... I've been wanting to network with the people who go to this conference, but I might well try something else -- either for this year or for next.

[Parasaurolophus]

Thanks, Parasaurolophus and Sun_Worshiper. I appreciate your perspectives. I'll give this some more thought (leaning now against trying to submit the paper to the conference). Above all, I wouldn't want to potentially sour my relationship with the journal... I've been wanting to network with the people who go to this conference, but I might well try something else -- either for this year or for next.

Oh, I wouldn't worry about the journal at all. To my mind, it's a breach of conference etiquette--but one you can definitely get away with at a bigger conference. And even then, it's not the kind of etiquette breach that will see you blacklisted or anything.

[Sun_Worshiper]

Thanks, Parasaurolophus and Sun_Worshiper. I appreciate your perspectives. I'll give this some more thought (leaning now against trying to submit the paper to the conference). Above all, I wouldn't want to potentially sour my relationship with the journal... I've been wanting to network with the people who go to this conference, but I might well try something else -- either for this year or for next.

Oh, I wouldn't worry about the journal at all. To my mind, it's a breach of conference etiquette--but one you can definitely get away with at a bigger conference. And even then, it's not the kind of etiquette breach that will see you blacklisted or anything.

I agree with Para's take on this.

[Hegemony]

You could do it, but it's pointless. The idea is to present research while it's still in the formative stage, and capable of being revised. Presumably you are past the point of being able to make major changes. So it's a waste of time and effort to submit it for a conference. Instead, submit the next thing you're working on.

[jerseyjay]

You could do it, but it's pointless. The idea is to present research while it's still in the formative stage, and capable of being revised. Presumably you are past the point of being able to make major changes. So it's a waste of time and effort to submit it for a conference. Instead, submit the next thing you're working on.

I think it depends on what you plan on doing with the research. If you have researched a topic, written an article, and you are now done with the topic, presenting it at a conference does seem somewhat pointless. (It would have the benefit of propagating your research, but you would miss out on being able to do anything with the feedback you receive.)

However, in my work, I often see an article as merely one more stage of my research. That is, I publish an article and work out some ideas, and them I incorporate them into a broader project, usually a book.

I have been working on a general topic for the past several years. I have presented a bunch of papers, and published several articles. I have recently written an article that will be published. I will be presenting some form of the same research at a major conference coming up. It probably will be too late to change the actual article. However, I am working on a broader project, and I would hope to incorporate feedback into my ultimate project (probably a book).

So long as you are still revising your broader project, then it could be useful to present parts of it both in published form and at conferences. Once your research is finished, then it becomes pointless to present it at a conference.

(That said, I have given talks based on books that I have already published--although I am always clear that this is the case. It is sometimes useful to have discussion about my research after it is published. Even then, however, I am always contemplating how my research will evolve.)

[monterio]

You could do it, but it's pointless. The idea is to present research while it's still in the formative stage, and capable of being revised. Presumably you are past the point of being able to make major changes. So it's a waste of time and effort to submit it for a conference. Instead, submit the next thing you're working on.

I think it depends on what you plan on doing with the research. If you have researched a topic, written an article, and you are now done with the topic, presenting it at a conference does seem somewhat pointless. (It would have the benefit of propagating your research, but you would miss out on being able to do anything with the feedback you receive.)

However, in my work, I often see an article as merely one more stage of my research. That is, I publish an article and work out some ideas, and them I incorporate them into a broader project, usually a book.

I have been working on a general topic for the past several years. I have presented a bunch of papers, and published several articles. I have recently written an article that will be published. I will be presenting some form of the same research at a major conference coming up. It probably will be too late to change the actual article. However, I am working on a broader project, and I would hope to incorporate feedback into my ultimate project (probably a book).

So long as you are still revising your broader project, then it could be useful to present parts of it both in published form and at conferences. Once your research is finished, then it becomes pointless to present it at a conference.

(That said, I have given talks based on books that I have already published--although I am always clear that this is the case. It is sometimes useful to have discussion about my research after it is published. Even then, however, I am always contemplating how my research will evolve.)

In this case, the forthcoming article is part of a larger project I'm developing, so hypothetical feedback would be relevant to future papers or a possible book project. But in that case, perhaps it would be better to just write the next essay in the series and present that at a future conference (not this one though, due to timing).

I appreciate the point by Parasaurolophus and Sun_Worshiper about conference etiquette. I think perhaps I would have felt better about proceeding with this idea if I had been invited to present the paper (or something like that). So, in the end I suppose I'm not going to submit the paper to the conference.

Thanks for the feedback.