I partially agree with my colleague Ahed Jumah Alkhatib regarding the cost of financing a meeting. Nevertheless the human dimension found during a meeting much more important because it allows for constructive exchanges that encourage us to persevere or correct some of our approaches

I partially agree with my colleague Ahed Jumah Alkhatib regarding the cost of financing a meeting. Nevertheless the human dimension found during a meeting much more important because it allows for constructive exchanges that encourage us to persevere or correct some of our approaches

I have published seven conference proceedings, very successfully.

The big challenge I faced was maintaining the quality of the researches published in proceedings.

My fellow researcher has presented my second conference paper in one of the IEEE conference named IEEE UPCON 2015 in early December last year held at IIIT Allahabad, India. The proceeding is yet to be published online in IEEE Exp. I am waiting for it since its presentation.

I agree with Subhash. Papers in conferences are of variable quality. Many papers are accommodated because high quality papers are not sufficient. The biggest challenge that editors/conference directors   have is  compromising on quality. 

Dear Debra,

I have published a few conference proceedings, the most challenges were how to select the suitable design for the proceedings book beside the evaluation of different quality of papers.

Sadly, Hong Kong  higher edu authorities do not recognize Conference proceedings as part of recognizable (in terms of academic promotion) publication outcome. I refer to the difference between a 'normal' book chapter and a chapter in Conference proceedings.

Dear Debra.

You need to decide what kind of Conference proceedings you want or people would like to. There are:

1) Online/CD-ROM Conference proceedings

2) Fast Printed Conference proceedings by non-mainstream academic publishers or associations

3) Conference proceedings published in standard academic book (Springer has a Conference proceedings book series). It is unlikely that all papers from a big conference are published in one book volume, so, in this case, you need to make a selection of best ones, for example, selected few from the option (2). You would  need a team of reviewers (a dozen maybe) and a  team of editors (2-4)

4)  Finally, a book that is NOT Conference proceedings. It is a totally separated one with few authors (participants and/or non-participants) by invitation.

I have done 2, 3, and 4.  I know that (1) is easier but it is not worthwhile in my context.

Option (4) is the best for recognition in my Hong Kong context

Inasmuch cost in terms of funding and traveling is usually a challenge, the idea of publishing in online conferences as good alternatives in a way defeats the main essence of conferences, which to me is "the human dimension found during a meeting...... because it allows for constructive exchanges that encourage us to persevere or correct some of our approaches" according to Fadel Djamel. As a result of this challenge of costing, I usually advice people to look for and attend conferences in their region so as to reduce cost.

I have been involved in conference organizations, but I have not been involved in such that publish conference proceedings. However I have attended conferences as an oral presenter where conference proceedings were published. The major issue will be in the quality of researches from the conference, as some of these publishers have standards which needs to be maintained. If however the organizing committee can guarantee the publishers a strict peer review process so as to select quality materials during the screening process, I do not think there should be a problem.

There are so many procedia for publishing conference materials, depending on the theme of your conference. The first step should be to contact them to express interest. To me, I would prefer that the publishing options, either in procedia or conference proceedings be made available and open to participants at the registration period, so one can decide to opt for publishing in procedia/journals or just the conference proceedings. This method was adopted by organizers of a conference I registered for with Acta Horticulturae. You can get further info from these sites:

https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals/procedia

http://www.cafei.upm.edu.my/home.php?&value=2

Regards,

Jay.

Updating, reviewing and improving quality of papers for publication in conference proceeding is very difficult task.

Technical quality of the paper is decided during the reviewing phase and therefore proceedings team do not have any control on it. However another very important issue that the people responsible for the proceedings need to remember is the presentation  quality.and style.  From my experience I found many submitted paper do not maintain the prescribed format and it is extremely difficult and time consuming to edit those manuscripts especially when they are in pdf format. .Quality of presentation including language is another very important component. 

As an senior researcher, I do have many conference proceedings in paper form, some in digital form. I do consider my paper "Contribution to the Design of Small Parts Assembly System" attached which is printed in both proceedings and than in Journal. It was a practical solution which was discussed a lot at the Conference.

I have assured myself that there are papers that were published in some Conference Proceedings without peer review or paper with low quality.

Article "Contribution to the Design of Small Parts Assembly System"

I agree with everyone's comments but mine as to do with the time it takes to accept the paper

There are a number of ways to publish conference proceedings.  One is though your university or some group affiliated with your conference.  Another that can reach a broad audience is through a journal. A number of journals are willing and interested in publishing conference proceedings if the topic is within their readers' interest.  The way to explore this is to contact journals that your subject matter is usually published in and see whether they would consider a proposal.  Often they will consider a special supplement to the journal.  The problem with both venues is cost.  Someone or group needs to cover the publication and distribution costs.

As an example of what can be done with proceedings I give as a reference a Supplement to the July  2015 issue of Transfusion (volume 55, No 2S, July 2015) This was a supplement titled Strategies to Address Hemolytic Complications of Immune Globulin Infusions.  The papers in the Supplement resulted from presentations made at a workshop with the same name.  After the workshop we solicited authors for their interest/willingness to publish their work.  We presented a proposal to the journal Transfusion and it was accepted.  A paper not given at the workshop that addressed the uses of Ig was suggested and an additional author was solicited to write it.  We had two "guest editors" and followed the same review procedures as the journal with at least two reviewers per paper. Feedback was given to the authors for improving the manuscript and for clarifications.  The beauty of this approach was that the authors knew that their paper was going to be published since their work was part of the workshop.  There was a time delay form the workshop to producing the supplement.  One direction to the contributing authors was to take the opportunity to update their presentations to include any new and relevant findings and literature.  This afforded the opportunity to produce a publication that was current and incorporated new material, some of which resulted from discussions at the workshop. The resulting product has been used as a reference for the issue of hemolysis complications due to treatment with immune globulin infusions.

Putting together the supplement was a labor of love.  It took a lot of effort to handle all the processes necessary.  It made me appreciate more the work that journal reviewers  and editors do. As mentioned, cost on this  was an issue.  We had funding support from both the FDA and the Plasma Protein Therapeutics Association that also cosponsored the workshop.

Another possible less time consuming that may not require funding is to see if a journal will publish conference proceedings.  Usually in this case they are summaries of the conference and not the full presentations.  We had done these too and they are much easier to develop.  But, they generally consist of summaries or address the topics of the conference with short discussions,  such as a question and answer format.  The best way to approach this is also to first contact a journal edition to gauge interest before you start the work of assembling the publication.

I hope this short history that relates to our recent experience is helpful.Good luck.

Thanks for this article Brenda.  This illustrates the need for the people responsible for publishing the conference proceedings to be diligent.   The quality of the report is only as good as the effort that goes into it.  I think we need to exert caution in looking at the item you sent though.  This is probably an anomaly and not the standard.  it is hard to imagine how any editor of a proceedings would not pick up bogus papers.  And authors who did not appear on presentations.  Through review is critical to ensure the end product is of high quality.

Lately there have been even more troubling papers that deal with retracted papers.  Here cases of fraud were the prime cause.  Followed by errors the authors made in the study.  These are difficult if not impossible for a reviewer to detect and there is almost a three year lag between the publication and the retraction. These are frequently identified when we try to replicate findings and cannot.

Publication of conference proceedings are important since it is a critical way to disseminate findings on a specific topic.  As Debra said if there was a terrific conference where valuable information was discussed it is almost a disservice not to have the materials disseminated.  Subhash indicated that he has been very successful in publishing conference proceedings as has others. We know it is possible, but it entails work and finances to support the activity. 

I hope Debra finds a way to get her proceedings out.