next »

[aaaatobbbb]

Here is an unusual case, at least I think so. Someone submitted the same results as 4 different papers to 4 different conferences and all of them got accepted. Another person I know of, also got the same results accepted at 2 conferences. Its a top 20 research university in engineering.

Is this (submitting same results to increase length of your resume) common?

Is it ethical?

How is this viewed when you go for job hunt? Do people care to even read all your conf papers?

[midtownlabgeek]

Are all the conferences in the same field? similar audience?

If the same research relates to several different fields, or has implications for several different fields, then it makes sense to share it in several different places.  (My thesis had elements of at least two different fields, and yes, some of the lab's results got "recycled" into presentations at conferences in both those fields.)

If it's the same audience every time, they're going to get fairly tired of your acquaintance's talk.  Although it might be amusing if they wind up chiming in at key points.  "All together now,..."

[embitteredhistorian]

Here is an unusual case, at least I think so. Someone submitted the same results as 4 different papers to 4 different conferences and all of them got accepted. Another person I know of, also got the same results accepted at 2 conferences. Its a top 20 research university in engineering.

Is this (submitting same results to increase length of your resume) common?

Is it ethical?

How is this viewed when you go for job hunt? Do people care to even read all your conf papers?

I don't think it's unethical, but I don't think it will help your resume too much to have 4 identical conference presentations side by side. However, I'm in English, so I'm sure engineering may have different rules.

[dellaroux]

Are the titles all the same?

Sometimes things have a slightly different focus and are titled to reflect that; sometimes the cluster of titles themselves make the point, that these are different aspects or applications of the material in different contexts, and there are different points to be made on each one.

In that case, I'd just think the person was being thorough and careful and making sure to address the various issues in their appropriate conference contexts.

The exact-same paper, I'd have a problem with, but there may be enough cross-over among conference planners and attendees that after the second one, someone might query the issue, I should think.

[mouseman]

Major question - are the conference proceedings considered publications?  If so, than this is ethically questionable, and the presenter may get slammed.  If the conferences proceedings are not publications, the person's CV may simply look as though he/she is a "one hit wonder".  Not a very good place to be either.  I would withdraw the paper from all but the top conference.

[mended_drum]

"This person" if giving exactly the same talk should only list it on the cv once.  After the first listing, he or she can add, "Also presented at X, Y and Z conferences on such and such dates."  That way, the person can do the networking and presentations while not artificially lengthening the cv.  I've seen talks cited this way twice from job candidates, and both times someone pointed out the honesty and forthrightness in the way the candidate had chosen to handle it.  That's what you want.  Not someone who happened to be at more than one of the conferences detecting and artificially enhanced cv.

[imawakenow]

Is this (submitting same results to increase length of your resume) common?

Is it ethical?

It depends on what you mean. As others have suggested, it will depend on if the author is working on one data set and doing substantially different analyses. In that case, I see no problem.

If it's the same exact analysis that is being presented at different conferences without new theoretical or practical applications, then it would be a problem in my field (broadly social sciences). But there may be field-specific guidelines for engineering. You or the submitter should check with what is standard in your field and/or speak to someone in your department.

How is this viewed when you go for job hunt? Do people care to even read all your conf papers?

When I've served on SCs, I've looked at the conferences, divisions submitted to (if available), titles of papers, etc. to see what pattern emerges. What is more important to me is to see a progression from conference paper to journal article. Submitting basically the same paper to four conferences wouldn't help a candidate and may slightly hurt (again to me).

I usually read whatever writing sample is provided by the candidate and read what is available in online journals and/or conference proceedings.

My experience has been that CV padders, pad in other ways that become fairly obvious.

[scampster]

How is this viewed when you go for job hunt? Do people care to even read all your conf papers?

When I've served on SCs, I've looked at the conferences, divisions submitted to (if available), titles of papers, etc. to see what pattern emerges. What is more important to me is to see a progression from conference paper to journal article. Submitting basically the same paper to four conferences wouldn't help a candidate and may slightly hurt (again to me).

I usually read whatever writing sample is provided by the candidate and read what is available in online journals and/or conference proceedings.

In engineering, we typically don't provide writing samples. But the conference paper questions is very specific to engineering discipline. Conference proceedings mean nothing in my discipline (except to make people wonder why there isn't a real paper about the topic if there isn't one, as imawakenow said). But to my knowledge, conference proceedings are important in computer science fields.

I list all my presentations, but I wonder if I should take some of them off, as the titles actually sound pretty redundant. The thing is that they aren't actually the same talk - there is usually some time separation between them and the talk has evolved significantly during that time. Anyone who saw the two talks wouldn't think it padding (I think), but on paper they kind of look the same. I have recently started to take care in how I name my presentations so that this is less of a problem in the future.

[totoro]

There would be zero problem with this in economics or geography. Many economics papers in top journals list a long list of places where the paper was presented in the acknowledgments.

Here is an unusual case, at least I think so. Someone submitted the same results as 4 different papers to 4 different conferences and all of them got accepted. Another person I know of, also got the same results accepted at 2 conferences. Its a top 20 research university in engineering.

Is this (submitting same results to increase length of your resume) common?

Is it ethical?

How is this viewed when you go for job hunt? Do people care to even read all your conf papers?

[verysneaky]

There may be a larger issue here. In my field (English), presenting the same results or the same paper at four conferences would be an absolutely terrible allocation of time, especially for a grad student. But the rest of the thread suggests that this may be very field dependent.

[prof_gnu]

Here is an unusual case, at least I think so. Someone submitted the same results as 4 different papers to 4 different conferences and all of them got accepted. Another person I know of, also got the same results accepted at 2 conferences. Its a top 20 research university in engineering.

Is this (submitting same results to increase length of your resume) common?

Is it ethical?

How is this viewed when you go for job hunt? Do people care to even read all your conf papers?

For my engineering-adjacent subdiscipline this is totally normal.  It's a way to disseminate your results to several audiences.   Typically, I (or my co-author(s)) present the same basic results at the big national convention and at several small sub-field specific or international conferences (tailored for the various audiences, length requirements, etc.). Very few of these conferences have formalized conference proceedings.  It's mainly a way to draw attention to recently published or currently in-press work.

[t_r_b]

The trick is to come up with different-sounding titles so they look like different papers on your CV.

Managing that for FOUR iterations of the same paper will be tricky, but not impossible or unprecedented.

[pink_]

Your friend must be independently wealthy, as it would be prohibitively expensive for most of us to spend that kind of money on the same paper four different times.

[scampster]

Your friend must be independently wealthy, as it would be prohibitively expensive for most of us to spend that kind of money on the same paper four different times.

If it is a top 20 engineering program, odds are the advisor is paying for it. Although I'm pretty sure my advisor wouldn't pay for me to attend four conferences in the same year where I presented the same results. Maybe two in a year if they were different audiences.

[commcycle]

Your friend must be independently wealthy, as it would be prohibitively expensive for most of us to spend that kind of money on the same paper four different times.

Bingo. While I don't think it's unethical, I'm not sure what presenting the same material four times would get you. It wouldn't add to your C/V, and I would imagine that some of the attendees would start to say, hmm, haven't we heard this one before? That's not a particularly flattering light to be seen in, particularly as I would imagine these are the same profs who are going to be on hiring committees once you graduate.

This is really field-dependent. By comparison, I'm in a social sciences discipline. The latest APA manual has a rather in-depth ethics section talking about how submission of the same results to multiple venues is a no-no. That said, I know of many high-profile profs who, shall we say, slice & dice to extract multiple articles with nearly identical data, and presenting the same paper at multiple conferences isn't considered being "published" in the same sense as a journal article. The typical path is conference (or two) => journal article => book (maybe).