Currently searching for conferences related to workplace training and learning and saw that on some websites they ask potential participants to submit papers to attend. Do people submit these papers to get published at the conferences? Can I attend such conferences just to listen?
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Many people try to present a paper (not really a paper, usually) because they then get the conference attendance paid for (often, schools, institutions, and businesses or funding sources can/will only pay for attendance if you are a presenter). There are different levels of conferences (anywhere from fairly local, like state-level, to international), but the general idea is that each presentation (oral or poster) has to be accepted by the conference organizers. The conference itself will have dedicated categories of subjects that they will consider for presentation. They ask people to submit abstracts and decide, based on the abstracts, who will be allowed to present and who gets rejected. Lots of people do get rejected, particularly at the national and international conference level (many more submissions than places in the conference).
Originality and general interest to the attendees are primary considerations for deciding who gets accepted for a presentation. That is, usually, the material to be presented has to be something that is new, not a rehash of work that has been published elsewhere. There are sometimes designated speakers (well-known speakers) who can be asked to give a larger talk on their area of specialty (these are the “Bigwigs” of the science).
Unless there is a dedicated book of papers (which happens sometimes, for special subjects at a conference, I have written a few), the only written documentation will be the abstract. Abstracts have a word limit and also need to provide a decent summary of the “New” aspect of the work. Generally speaking, work given at a conference as a oral presentation or as a poster, is work in progress that will eventually be published in a journal somewhere.
The general idea of such conferences is to get some colleague input into your work, share your work with others before it gets officially published, and as a way to get the younger professionals and what they are doing for study out into the general circle of researchers.
Typically, in my experience, presentations lead to discussions with others having similar research interests and is quite useful for word-of-mouth exchange of ideas. It can sometimes lead to future collaboration, and for the younger folks, particularly those just finishing grad school, it is a way to find a job. Who you know matters, and conferences, while very good places to learn things, are also about meeting the people who work in the field of study.
The presentations are called “Papers” but generally are not actual papers. They are papers in preparation, lots of the time. Perhaps almost ready to be published, so kind of a way to get attention for a soon-to-be released scientific paper. Getting that attention is surprisingly important. When thousands of papers get published every month, it is easy to get overlooked. No one can read everything.
A minor consideration is that the publication of the abstract defines your time of “discovery”, and it can sometimes be a few years before actual publication of the work. It is not usually an issue, but some things do get discovered by different groups at about the same time, and nothing is worse than doing years of work only to have it be relatively meaningless because someone else released the very same set of information and ideas a couple of months ahead of you. Second is not first, and first release gets almost all the credit, and credit for discoveries is very important for future career paths.
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