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What are conference papers and proceedings?

Conferences papers are the papers presented at a conference by individual speakers. Researchers often use conferences to present their research findings to their peers. When all the papers are made available from a particular conference, this collection of papers is referred to as the Proceedings from that particular conference. Proceedings may also result from the meetings and symposia of professional/scholarly bodies and organisations.

Why would you use them?

• To find up to the minute research on a topic
• To provide you with the researchers' own explanation of their research
• To find sources of information related to this research e.g. subject experts, research team members
• To find out about best practices or innovations in a particular area

Where would you find them?

• Many individuals "publish" their conference papers on their own personal websites, or on the websites of their research institution
• Libraries also hold some hard copy conference proceedings or indexes (searchable lists) of conference proceedings
• Some electronic databases include conference papers.
• Journals often produce individual issues containing entire proceedings
• Conference proceedings may also be published individually as a monograph

Difficulties in accessing conference papers and proceedings include:

• Societies and Associations may also choose to publish abstracts only of papers
delivered at a conference in their societys' journal
• authors may choose to publish their conference paper in another journal entirely!
• Proceedings may not be formally "published"

How to find them?

Conference papers can be hard to find, so allow plenty of time! To help you overcome any difficulties in locating conference proceedings, the UCD Library subscribes to many databases containing details of conferences and their proceedings. Most of the details of conference proceedings are in bibliographic format (i.e. you are given all the publication details, enabling you to source the full text). The UCD Library Inter Library Loans service will request hard copy conference papers for you if available. More details on the Inter Library Loans service here.

The UCD Library Catalogue

The UCD Library may sometimes have the papers of conferences - use the UCD Library catalogue to search for them, using the KEYWORD option and searching for Proceedings and a keyword from the title, e.g. proceedings and medical; proceedings and social.

British Library Conference collection

Search the “British Library integrated catalogue” which includes over 400,000 conference proceedings on a variety of subjects

• Go to the British Library integrated catalogue home page
• Choose "Search the integrated catalogue"
• Click “Catalogue subset search” from the top bar
• Then choose “Document Supply Conferences” from the list.

Google Scholar http://.scholar.google.com/

Google Scholar returns results from educational and scholarly sites only. By using the "Advanced Search" option, you can combine your search terms to retrieve a variety of meetings, symposia and conferences.
Try the following:

Limiting the results to your subject will bring a wide spread of results.
NB - Google Scholar do not explain how they select sites for inclusion, nor what their definition of "Scholarly" is .

Databases with conference content

Journal articles often derive from papers given at conferences, or give an account of a conference that has taken place. Often, the proceedings are published as individual issue of a journal. To find journals and articles, use one of our journal databases or use your subject portal to find subject specific journal databases.

See a List of databases with conference proceedings content.

Subject websites with conference content

Gateways are free websites, compiled by subject specialist academics and librarians. Pinakes is a website that lists the relevant subject gateways for many subjects. Details of forthcoming or previous conferences can often be found using these sites - look for a "browse" or search button and search for conferences, congresses, proceedings etc to locate relevant conferences.

Useful gateways:

• Multiple subjects:
  Intute
  Type in "conferences" to the search box. Choose a subject area first to limit results
• Library and Information Studies: Infotoday
  International conferences and seminars listed by month available from the website of the publisher of "Information Today", which contains links, resources, publications and industry information

Newspapers

Details of conferences - both forthcoming and previous - are often reported upon in national newspapers. Information on using newspapers as a source, and for details of how to search newspapers here.

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Last updated: Mar 2009