In academia and librarianship,conference proceedings are a collection ofacademic papers published in the context of anacademic conference or workshop. Conference proceedings typically contain the contributions made by researchers at the conference. They are the written record of the work that is presented to fellow researchers. In many fields, they are published as supplements toacademic journals; in some, they are considered the main dissemination route; in others they may be consideredgrey literature. They are usually distributed in printed or electronic volumes, either before the conference opens or after it has closed.
A less common, broadermeaning ofproceedings are the acts and happenings of anacademic field, alearned society. For example, the title of theActa Crystallographica journals isNeo-Latin for "Proceedings inCrystallography"; theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America is the main journal of that academy.Scientific journals whoseISO 4 title abbreviations start withProc,Acta, orTrans are journals of the proceedings (transactions) of a field or of an organization concerned with it, in that secondary meaning of the word.
Selecting and collecting papers for conferences is organized by one or more persons, who form theeditorial team. The quality of the papers is typically ensured by having external people read the papers before they are accepted in the proceedings. The level of quality control varies considerably from conference to conference: some have only a binary accept/reject decision, others go through more thorough feedback and revisions cycles (peer reviewing or refereeing). Depending on the level of the conference, this process can take up to a year. The editors decide about the composition of the proceedings, the order of the papers, and produce the preface and possibly other pieces of text. Although most changes in papers occur on basis of consensus between editors and authors, editors can also single-handedly make changes in papers.[citation needed]
Since the collection of papers comes from individual researchers, the character of proceedings is distinctly different from an educational textbook. Each paper typically is quite isolated from the other papers in the proceedings. Mostly there is no general argument leading from one contribution to the next.[citation needed]
In some cases, theeditors of the proceedings may decide to further develop the proceedings into a textbook. This may even be a goal at the outset of the conference.
Conference proceedings are published in-house by the organizing institution of the conference or via anacademic publisher. For example, theLecture Notes in Computer Science by Springer take much of their input from proceedings. Conference proceedings also get published through dedicated proceedings series as an edited volume where all their inputs comes from the conference papers. For example, AIJR Proceedings[1][2] series published by academic publisherAIJR.[3] Publication of proceedings as edited volume in such series are different from publishing conference paper in the journals;[4] also known as conference issue. Increasingly, proceedings are published in electronic format via the internet or on CD, USB, etc.
In the sciences, the quality of publications in conference proceedings is usually not as high as that of internationalscientific journals. However, incomputer science, papers published in conference proceedings are accorded a higher status than in other fields, due to the fast-moving nature of the field.[5]
A number of full-fledgedacademic journals unconnected to particular conferences also use the word "proceedings" as part of their name, for example,Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Conference proceedings may be published as a book orbook series, in ajournal, or otherwise as aserial publication (seeexamples).[6] In many cases,impact factors are not available,[7] although otherjournal metrics (such asGoogle Scholarh-index andScimago-metrics) might exist.[citation needed]Bibliographic indexing often is done in separatebibliographic databases andcitation indexes, e.g.,Conference Proceedings Citation Index instead ofScience Citation Index.
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