Publishing Academic Research

Conferences provide excellent opprtunities for meeting, building relationships and sharing your research with other researchers working in your field.

Research is usually presented as an oral presentation or a poster. Conference proceedings usually comprise abstracts and written papers from the conference. Abstracts are usually required for both oral presentations and posters. Written papers are often optional for conference presenters and may be restricted to participants who gave oral presentations.

Conferences are promoted through society networks. Other listings of conferences include:

This guide is developed for conferences published by James Cook University. Information is provided about information that needs to be included for proceedings and papers in the proceedings, to comply with the current Australian Government assessment and data collection exercises.

In choosing whether to publish your research as a conference paper, be aware that your decision will determine whether the work will be counted for ERA as a Traditional Research Output (TRO).

In order for a conference paper to be eligible for ERA (as a Traditional Research Output), it must:

1. meet the definition of research i.e. be substantial, original and scholarly
2. be a major work of scholarship
3. have been presented at a conference, workshop or seminar of national or international significance
4. be published in full in the proceedings arising from the conference or workshop
5. be peer-reviewed.  An acceptable peer review process is one that involves an impartial and independent assessment or review of the research publication in its entirety before publication by independent, qualified experts before publication.

The types of conference publications that do not meet the ERA eligibility criteria include:

• papers that only appear in a volume handed out to conference participants
• keynote and plenary addresses
• poster presentations
• abstracts of conference publications

SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition, offers a list of Conference Management Software. (Note: software is not endorsed by SPARC, unless noted).

Believing that collaboration is crucial to effecting meaningful change, SPARC actively pursues partnerships with the non-profit publishing community and continues to develop resources and tools that aid publishers in remaining competitive and providing affordable options for libraries.