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An academic conference is a conference for researchers (not always academics) to present and discuss their work. Together with academic or scientific journals, conferences provide an important channel for exchange of information between researchers.

[edit] Overview

Generally, work is presented in the form of short, concise presentations lasting about 10 to 30 minutes, usually including discussion. The work may be bundled in written form as academic papers and published as the conference proceedings. Often there are one or more keynote speakers (usually scholars of some standing), presenting a lecture that lasts an hour or so, and which is likely to be advertised before the conference. Panel discussions, round tables on various issues, workshops may be part of the conference, the latter ones particularly if the conference is related to the performing arts.

Prospective presenters are usually asked to submit a short abstract of their presentation, which will be reviewed before the presentation is accepted for the meeting. Some disciplines require presenters to submit a paper of about 6'15 pages, which is peer reviewed by members of the program committee or referees chosen by them.

In some disciplines, such as English and other languages, it is common for presenters to read from a prepared script. In other disciplines such as the sciences, presenters usually base their talk around a visual presentation that displays key figures and research results.

A large meeting will usually be called a conference, while a smaller is termed a workshop. They might be single track or multiple track, where the former has only one session at a time, while a multiple track meeting has several parallel sessions with speakers in separate rooms speaking at the same time.

Depending on the theme of the conference, social or entertainment activities may also be offered; if it's a large enough conference, academic publishing houses may set up displays offering books at a discount. At larger conferences, business meetings for learned societies or interest groups might also take place.

Academic conferences fall into three categories:

• the themed conference, small conferences organized around a particular topic;
• the general conference, a conference with a wider focus, with sessions on a wide variety of topics. These conferences are often organized by regional, national, or international learned societies, and held annually or on some other regular basis.
• the professional conference, large conferences not limited to academics, but with academically-related issues

[edit] Organizing an academic conference

Conferences are usually organized either by a scientific society or by a group of researchers with a common interest. Larger meetings may be handled on behalf of the scientific society by a Professional Conference Organiser or PCO^[1].

The meeting is announced by way of a "Call For Papers" or a Call For Abstracts, which lists the meeting's topics and tells prospective presenters how to submit their abstracts or papers. Increasingly, submissions take place online using a managed service such as Community of Science or Oxford Abstracts.

[edit] See also

• Scientific journal
• Colloquium
• Congress
• Convention (meeting)
• Seminar
• Symposium
• Poster session
• Plenary session
• Professional conference
• Abstract management

[edit] External links

[edit] Professional Conference Organisers ' trade bodies

• Association of British Professional Conference Organisers
• International Association of Professional Congress Organisers
• International Congress & Convention Association
• Professional Convention Management Association
• Meetings Industry Association - UK conference organisers
• Meeting Professionals International

[edit] Lists of conferences

• Allconferences.com (conferences, trade shows and conventions)
• Confabb.com (mostly trade fairs, but some academic conferences)
• Conference Alerts.com
• conference-service.com (mathematics, physics, nuclear applications, chemistry, earth sciences, computer science)
• Eventseer.net (computer science and linguistics)
• ourGlocal.com (call for papers of academic conferences, event, symposia, and workshops)
• PapersInvited.com
• WikiCFP (A wiki site to organize and share CFP)
• Microbiology conferences (Worldwide microbiology conferences, meetings, symposia, workshops and advanced courses)
• Molecular biology conferences (Worldwide molecular biology conferences, meetings, symposia, workshops and advanced courses)
• MapMyEvent.com (Database of academic conferences)

[edit] Conference publishing services

• Proceedings of Science, an Open Access publishing service, born from the JHEP and organized by SISSA Medialab
• CEUR Workshop Proceedings, a free electronic publication service under the umbrella of RWTH Aachen University and has the ISSN 1613-0073
• Computing Research Repository, a free repository of scientific papers sponsored by ACM, arXiv, NCSTRL, and AAAI

[edit] References