What are Conference Proceedings?
Research findings are often presented at an early stage in the form of papers at one of the many national or international scientific conferences, congresses, symposia, workshops, etc. A conference is the place to present your on-going research, in order to get other people's views on the work. Conference papers can, therefore be a good way of finding out about current research. The papers from a conference are collected together and published as Conference Proceedings. Material presented at a conference is often published after amendments, as a journal article. Conferences often focus on research fields or trends within a given subject, providing an indication of what is currently considered to be of importance.
Published Conference Material
Conference material can be published both before
and after the actual conference.
Materials published prior to the meeting are called conference
preprints and can either be in the form of the
complete papers or a collection of abstracts. Sometimes these
preprints serve as material for discussion, sometimes they are
the final (and only) documentation from the meeting.
The final conference publication - the Proceedings - are published either at the conference itself or afterwards. They contain the papers given and, in some cases, discussions. Publication can, in some cases, take quite a time (up to one or two years). Many conferences are published either by the learned and professional societies or by commercial publishers. Many conferences do not result in published Proceedings. This causes problems, because references are made to papers given at meetings and these can be hard to identify and locate. For example, it is not always easy to obtain information on a "poster session" paper! One useful way to get hold of this type of information is to contact the author directly.
Many conferences require an e-mail address from the authors, so direct contact over the academic networks has become much easier. Another possibility is to contact the conference organizers.
There are a number of publications which specifically cover conference literature:
Conference Papers Index - CPI
Louisville: Data Courier, 1973-
12 issues per year + annual index
The conferences are arranged under subject headings, one of which is chemistry. Available as an online database on STN, and DIALOG.
How do you find out about forthcoming conferences?Annual International Congress Calendar.
Brussels: Union of International Organizations, 1961-
4 issues per year.
This covers international conferences etc. in a multitude of subject areas
Forthcoming International Scientific and Technical Conferences
London: Aslib, 1954-
Published annually, with quarterly supplements.
Useful Internet resources for finding out about future conferences are:
Calendars showing the dates of forthcoming conferences in chemistry can be found in a number of journals, for example : The Chemical Engineer, Chemical and Engineering News and Chemistry and Industry.1997-1998 Conference Papers in chemistry are available at KTU Library: