Managing and Sharing Information

Conference papers can provide useful insights about ongoing research in your field before it’s published.

Academic conferences are events, perhaps continuing for two or three days, where people present news about their recent research and findings. Many conferences are held annually, sometimes at a different location each year. The conference organisers often collect the presented papers and publish them as the conference proceedings. Calls for papers alert you to forthcoming conferences, where you might want to present a poster or paper yourself.

You can search for conference papers in both indexing/abstracting databases and full text collections. However, increasingly, many conference papers are circulated freely online in open access archives or conference websites, and can be found using search engines.

Indexes to conference papers

Many subject orientated abstracting databases include conference papers within their coverage, e.g. ERIC, Historical Abstracts and PsycInfo. There are also two databases, which provide a multidisciplinary coverage: Web of Science and ZETOC.

Web of Science indexes conference papers across STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and medicine) and the social sciences from 1990 onwards. Each conference paper is accompanied by an abstract. You can access Web of Science through the Web of Knowledge portal.

ZETOC includes table of contents access to around 16,000 new conference proceedings per year, as they are received by the British Library. It also indexes approximately 20,000 current journals. ZETOC covers all subjects, from 1993 onwards. One of the ZETOC’s strengths is its alerting service, which you can use to keep up-to-date with relevant new articles and conference papers.

Full text conference papers

Three of the Library's databases offer access to full text conference papers:

ACM Digital Library

IEEE/IET Electronic Library

Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Proceedings

The Library also holds various conference proceedings in print. Some of these are shelved with journals (if there is a sequence of proceedings over several years) and some are shelved with books (if the proceedings are only available for one year). To find whether the Library holds the proceedings of a particular conference in print, you should check the catalogue.

Academic staff, who have been research active for a long time, usually have well developed contacts with other researchers in the same field. The term "invisible college" is sometimes used to describe their well honed networks. Contacts are useful for exchanging ideas and learning about research news, before it is published in journals.

If you are relatively new to research, how can you start making these contacts? One way is to identify calls for papers at forthcoming conferences, and then present a poster or paper at one of these conferences. Other options are joining an academic network or mailing list. For effective teaching practices there is the "Higher Education Academy" website to consult.

Calls for papers

Calls for papers alert you to forthcoming conferences and special events, where you might to able to present a poster or paper. Presenting a poster or paper will potentially offer you opportunities to:

• Disseminate your research to people who are keen to know about it
• Network with people researching the same or similar topics
• Receive feedback and suggestions about your research
• Discuss collaborative ventures with people at other institutions

AllConferences.com offers a searchable directory of current conferences.

The Conference Alerts website offers information about current conferences and a monthly conference alerting service.

The ResearchGate website enables networking amongst researchers, and also provides information about current conferences. For more information about ResearchGate, please see the section below.

Academic networking websites

Graduate Junction was designed to help Masters and PhD students make contact with persons sharing similar research interests, across disciplines. It was set up by two postgraduates at Durham University in 2008. After registering, you can search for fellow postgraduates by keyword, institution, department, supervisor or name, and communicate with them. You can also join research groups, and access the postgraduate jobs information. Graduate Junction claims to have approaching 20,000 postgraduates registered.

ResearchGate enables networking amongst researchers. Registration involves setting up a personal profie giving details of your education, experience, research interests and publications, which can then be viewed by other members. As well as enabling networking, ResearchGate also provides information about: conferences, jobs and publications. Consulting this information doesn't require registration. ResearchGate claims to have over a million members.

Mailing lists

Sometimes it's easy to feel that you are the only person struggling with a particular problem. One way to feel less isolated is to join an academic e-mailing list, and share your experiences and problems with fellow students and researchers. When you join a list, it's always a good idea to read a few messages, before posting anything yourself. That way you get a feel for the list and are able to see if the list is right for you.

You will find a selection of academic mailing lists at JISCmail, the national academic mail listing service.

JISCmail

Subject centres

The Higher Education Academy promotes effective teaching practices across a wide range of disciplines. Subject centres, based in different UK universities, provide discipline related information about: lecturer resources, learning materials, events, awards & funding etc.