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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If you have a paper/talk/poster accepted your institution often pays for your trip. So, submit paper=free drinks.
Some conference papers are kind of like an easier version of publishing research. Your paper doesn’t have to be as complete or polished as somethingyou would submit to a journal. But if your concept is not well founded you can get embarrassed during the question and answer session, so you need to be prepared.
The Q&A can also help you fine tune your concept and identify areas that need more work, so it can be like rapid response peer review.
Other conference papers, specifically for engineering (in my experience) are just a summary of a potential presentation. In this case, the material may not be ground breaking or new research, but just collects information from a lot of sources into a helpful reference format. And usually gives some insight into a niche design process.
I have actually presented one of these before. My company got requested to present on a particular topic by one of the organizers, and I got paid to develop the presentation and give it. I had to submit a summary paper for inclusion in the conference proceedings. Also got me a big chuck of PDHs. Went over well, and buzz from it got us more work in the field.
Answer: if you’d like to *present* you submit an abstract of what you plan to present. And yes, you can 100% just attend.
I went to grad school (and hated it and dropped out after 3 years). Went to a lot of conferences. Papers and posters aren’t required, but it’s generally expected that some people will sign up to present something otherwise there would be no posters. In grad school, students are/should be constantly working on research TO present because it’s part of their requirements to present so many times.
I’ve been to several professional conferences as well and those have all been lecture based, not posters. Only a dozen or two speakers or panelists for a few days, so most people are there to listen. When the emails go out for planning those conferences, they generally ask for speakers in various topics, but it’s by no means a requirement to attend—numbers wise that wouldn’t make sense.
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.
I might be cynical, but I would submit a research paper, get it approved, and then my college employer woukd pay for the travel
>Do people submit these papers to get published at the conferences?
Yes. This is how many industries do information sharing. For example, in my industry (engineering, civil specifically) there are tons of conferences depending on your focus and interests. People present research they’ve done on process improvements, or how certain technologies have been used on projects they worked on, etc. It’s a way for information to be disseminated to the profession – and for people to network and expand who they know, thereby expanding WHAT they know.
>Can I attend such conferences just to listen?
Absolutely. But there are usually attendance fees. It used to be easier to “sneak” into meeting rooms to listen, but now they often have someone posted at the door scanning your nametag or whatever to grant access, to ensure you’ve paid.
These are for the academic side of conferences. If you submit research, you have the opportunity to speak on said research if you want to speak.
You can absolutely attend conferences without submitting papers or speaking. They need folks to listen!
In terms of L&D conferences, check out ATD (TD.org), they are one of the largest places where training pros get together for an annual conference.
In pre Internet times, scientific communication basically was done through papers and readings (at scholarly societies) in the beginning (that’s how scientific books and journals developed). In the 20s century conferences became one of the hot places to be to learn about new things in your specific field and discuss things with groups of people. It was basically the networking events of the year and often very fundamental concepts of fields stem from people discussing their different findings at conferences – which you first had to write down so others could review it.
Today conferences and their papers/proceedings can still be important, but nowadays it depends on the field and it’s way more diversified because communication is so much easier.
Source: I work in scientific publishing and the history of that is one of my favorite niche topics to read about. Yes, I talk about scientific journals all day and then read about them at night as well.
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