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[bernardblack]

I hope that here, rather than "Research Questions", is the right place to post this - apologies if it isn't, and mods feel free to move it.

I attended a conference in June which, in the initial call for papers and the paper acceptance both talked about the publication of the conference proceedings, even to the extent of stating that although papers read at the conference should be X minutes long, the version for the proceedings should be Y pages. The fact that the conference proceedings were going to be published was a signficant factor in my university's agreeing to fund my attendance (and the actual appearance of them will or would be a significant factor in my obtaining future conference funding). It wasn't down the road, we're talking about a 5-hour flight here.

When I got to the conference, the person with whom I'd been corresponding about practical arrangements and length of paper etc. wasn't there, and none of the organizers seemed to know anything about the conference proceedings. Alarm bells did start to ring, but I thought the conference itself wasn't the place to push the issue, with the organizers having lots of demands on their time. A month after getting back, having written up the paper to the specified length, I wrote to the organizers to ask about house style, end notes vs. footnotes etc. No response. This is a European country where things do stop for the summer, although there was also no vacation message. I wrote again a month later, "just in case" the message had gone missing. That was a month ago.

It seems fairly clear that, if they were ever genuinely planned, these conference proceedings are now not happening. OK, so there was never any guarantee of my paper being accepted for the proceedings (although there wasn't a mention of a further peer-review for this stage), but the whole thing strikes me as deceitful, and does make me look bad in front of my university. Of course people are more likely to come to your conference if you're promising to publish the proceedings, and since no explanation has been forthcoming it doesn't seem like this promise was made in good faith. I'll submit the paper elsewhere of course, that's not the issue, although of course the timesclae on that is quite a bit longer. The conference wasn't organized by a university but an academic insitution recognised in the country where it exists (funded in turn by a huge international organization).

What would you do at this point? I guess the only answer is to chalk it up to experience, fair enough. Is this a standard sort of occurence? I'm right at the beginning of my career, PhD less than a year ago, and I guess I would appreciate people sharing opinions, experiences and advice. Thanks in advance!

[peppergal]

My experience, having both published in proceedings and edited/organized publication of proceedings, is that it is far too early for you to write this off as "not materializing".

The organizers may still be in negotiations with presses, which would explain why they haven't contacted people about house style, etc (since that will likely be determined by the press).

It's also entirely possible that the proceedings organizers and the conference organizers are two different sets of people (frequently the case in my experience), and the conference organizers didn't forward your queries to the proceedings organizers.

I've seen it take up to two years for proceedings to materialize from a conference.  In that case, I was an author, and my paper wasn't solicited until 6 months after the conference.

I would send another polite email, asking if the proceedings are still happening, and who the point person on the proceedings is.  If there is still silence, then you can write the publication off, and submit your paper elsewhere.  If, down the road, they solicit the paper for proceedings, you can tell them that it is being published elsewhere.

[bernardblack]

Thanks for this - it is certainly useful to know that it can take six months to solicit the paper. I guess I can't imagine a situation when I would just ignore emails if I didn't know the answer to the question, and this is what made me think all was not as advertised!

[vardahilwen]

Thanks for this - it is certainly useful to know that it can take six months to solicit the paper. I guess I can't imagine a situation when I would just ignore emails if I didn't know the answer to the question, and this is what made me think all was not as advertised!

Is there a different contact person you could write to?  Perhaps your emails have been falling into the "black hole" due to someone being on sabbatical, having left the institution, etc.

[msparticularity]

Um--was this one of the conferences organized through Common Ground Publishing? (You may need to look at the fine print in the conference invitation to find this.) If so, there has been a thread elsewhere on the Fora speculating about the actual nature of these conferences, and also on the published proceedings. They advertise these events as "building new knowledge communities," and certainly some respectable international scholars are involved, but the connections among the conference organizers/hosts and the publishing seems a little different from the norm.