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Questions regarding conference submissions

In our new “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:

Is it useful or worthwhile for graduate students to submit papers to the APA? Looking at the schedule for submissions, supposing that I had a paper that I wanted to conference, it looks like the soonest possible APA that I could submit to would happen in January 2027. That seems like a lot of time to “bench” this paper, and given that many PhD programs are putting pressure on a quick time-to-degree, I’m not sure it’s a very wise option for graduate students who aren’t very early in their programs. Am I missing something, or are specialist conferences with quicker turnaround times the way to go?

I think the OP is missing something that a couple of other commenters asked about. One reader asked, “Can you submit a paper to a journal *and* a conference simultaneously?”, and another asked, “What is the etiquette regarding submitting the same paper for multiple conferences? If the same paper is accepted, and you present them in relatively short succession?”

The answers are: (1) of course you can submit papers to journals and conferences simultaneously, and (2) yes, you can submit the paper paper to multiple conferences and present them in short succession. So, to come back to the OP’s query, submitting a paper to an APA (or any other conference) doesn’t amount to “benching it.” Assuming your paper is in decent shape, you should be submitting to conferences and trying to publish those same papers. Conference submissions should in no way hold one up from publishing, etc.

Do readers agree/disagree?

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7 responses to “Questions regarding conference submissions”

  1. hey

    Some conferences ask (or require) that whatever you submit to the conference is not currently under review. I know this is true of the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA) conferences, at least. So it’s always worth checking. For PSA, they publish many (and for PSA 2026, perhaps all) accepted conference papers.

    Reply
  2. hey

    I meant *under review at a journal or already published*

    Reply
  3. Michel

    I agree with Marcus.

    But also, I don’t think it’s particularly worthwhile to present at the APA. There are too many parallel sessions, and attendance is poor. That makes the feedback and networking aspects poor, too. You’re better off presenting at sub-disciplinary conferences.

    Reply
  4. Bill V.

    The point made by “hey” might be particular to PSA: I can’t think of any other conferences where nearly all the papers appear in a journal volume for the conference.

    For other cases, I think Marcus is correct. It seems like a long time between the Eastern APA submission deadline of Feb and the conference in Jan, but it would be a rare case indeed if you could submit a paper to a journal and have it in print in that amount of time. Which is to say, even if you do submit the same paper to a journal, it (very likely) won’t appear before the conference. Plus it won’t really be the “same” paper anyway, in part because conference papers are generally shorter than journal articles (5k words max for APA, 10k for many journals) and because a journal article will likely undergo serious revision in light of referee comments, etc. You can use different titles to mark the difference between the versions.

    A paper on the APA program is a worthy line on the cv, probably the best conference one can get from a cv perspective, so OP won’t be wasting their time. Plus the acceptance is in May or June, so you get the line on the cv well in advance of the fall job application season. And you get the practice presenting at the APA (a large audience of strangers) before most campus interviews occur, which is also good.

    Reply
  5. NonTT

    I submitted a paper to the APA as a grad student. In fact after the submission to the APA, I began submitting that paper to journals and it got accepted. By the time I presented it at the APA, the paper was already published online. All of that happened while still a grad student, but after advancing to candidacy. So I ended up adding three extra lines to my CV out of it – one for the conference presentation, one for the publication, and also the APA gave me an award for my submission. I think, overall, it was worth it. Whether it helped me on the job market – I don’t know. I secured a temporary full-time position.

    Reply
  6. APAer

    I think there are other reasons to submit to APA conferences – (i) your paper gets refereed (even if it is rejected … though without comments … but you get some sense of its viability), (ii) if it is accepted, you get comments from another person working in the same area, and (iii) you get to attend a conference which brings in a lot of people from the profession (and the conferences are often in nice cities). I am older, but earlier in my career, I think I presented about 8 papers at APAs. I most enjoyed the Pacific meetings because I lived in the northwest, and enjoyed the reprieve from winter. But when the Central was in Chicago that was also nice (and it was in Chicago about 2 out every 3 times).

    Reply
  7. editor and APA program committee member

    Having served on an APA program committee (and thus having refereed very, very many APA papers) I would take the idea that this is refereeing that helps give you a sense of viability of a paper with a serious grain of salt. (I also do editorial work for a journal, so I do have a sense of the comparison.) While we desk reject many papers at the journal I edit for, I can confidently say that there are papers I have desk rejected that I would have rated highly for the APA, and there are definitely papers that I have seen published in very good journals that I remembered rejecting the APA version of. Here are two important disparities: first, for a conference, I am looking for something interesting, that I think will generate good discussion, and I know that the author is likely nowhere near the stage of sending their paper to a journal (otherwise why get feedback on it/workshop it), so even relatively serious problems, sloppiness, bad writing, etc. can be outweighed by interest/good discussion. The standards for a journal (even the one I edit for, which likes papers that go out on a limb!) are so different; the paper has to be very clean, polished, well presented, and with no large/obvious issues (which is not to say there can’t be objections to it, obviously. The papers I’ve seen published in good journals, including top 5 generalist journals, that I’ve rejected from the APA were, frankly, boring to me. They made what I found to be a relatively small point. I don’t think the APA, which I see as a generalist conference, should have papers that are like, here’s a narrow adaption of (this is a generic example!) Williamson’s view on x, or even here’s a challenge to Williamson’s view on x. Such a paper seems like a better fit for a more narrowly focused conference.

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