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Submitting to a conference that publishes a collected volume while a paper is at a journal?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I’ve come across a CFA for a conference that fits perfectly with some of my work. The call states that the organizers anticipate publishing the conference papers in a collected volume. However, the paper I would present is already under review at a journal (it has a fairly long turnaround time, but I cannot exclude the possibility that the paper might be published around the time of the conference, if accepted). Journal publications are also what matter the most for promotion at my department, so I would hesitate to withdraw the paper from the journal and publish it in a volume. But I would still consider it valuable to present at the conference, as it includes networking, being exposed to new work by others, etc.

Is it considered inappropriate to submit an abstract for a conference without having the intention of contributing to a collected volume? If not, at what stage would it be best to inform the organizers? And would it look bad if I should end up presenting a paper that has just been published ahead of print?

Good questions. I've been in a similar situation before, and was equally confused about what to do. Another reader submitted the following reply:

Until your paper is actually accepted for publication you should feel free to continue to submit it to conferences – you cannot assume it will be accepted by a journal. And conference volumes are uncertain things – these days organizers are under pressure to say such things to the bodies funding the conferences. But they do not all come to fruition, and even those that do can take six years (as I experienced early in my career).

What do you all think?

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5 responses to “Submitting to a conference that publishes a collected volume while a paper is at a journal?”

  1. R

    The most important point here is that submitting your paper for publication in the edited volume is never obligatory. So you can present at the conference, wait for the organizers to get their act together on the edited volume, which usually takes several months, and then decide whether you want to give your paper to them. At the point where you’ve (voluntarily) submitted your paper for the edited volume, but definitely not before, I would treat it the same as a submission to a journal, in the sense that you shouldn’t simultaneously have it under review somewhere else.

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  2. Paul

    I agree with R with one caveat: if there is a true conference proceedings and an expectation that all presenters have to publish in the proceedings, then, of course, you need to decide beforehand which direction you want to go. But if it’s just a promised edited collection, it might never happen, and if it does, it usually takes years and does not include every paper, so in that case, present that paper and decide later.

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  3. Will the true conference proceedings please stand up

    Paul (or others), do the Oxford Studies conferences count as issuing in “true proceedings”? For my subfield, I have in mind WiNE, MadMeta, as well as UNC Normativity. It’s fairly reliable that these will publish not too long after the conference, I believe, but those who present at the conference are not technically automatically accepted for publication.

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  4. R

    I’ve never been involved with a conference where there is an “expectation that all presenters have to publish in the proceedings”. If a conference wanted to operate that way, I’d expect them to make it very clear that that was the case. It would depend a bit on the wording I suppose, but even then I wouldn’t take submitting to the CFA as a commitment to present and publish with them – only once accepted to the conference should you make an (ideally quick) decision whether to withdraw from the conference or the journal.

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  5. UK Postdoc

    The PSA, which publishes some but not all of accepted conference papers in a special issue, requires that “Papers submitted to PSA2024 may not be published, accepted for publication, or under review at the time of submission, and they may not be submitted elsewhere for publication while they are under consideration for publication in the PSA2024 supplementary issue of Philosophy of Science.” I don’t know if this is unusual or not, but it’s at least one large conference that has such a policy. If the conference does not explicitly state this, however, I would assume that there is no such restriction.

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