That’s the question Herbert Rotfeld asked in an essay on the ACR list. The point he makes is for ACR, AMA etc. but could well be made for say, Informs or CSCMP – that conferences that only publish abstracts lead to references to papers nobody read, and most importantly, nobody has access to. And it gets worse: track chairs don’t have the papers either, authors have stopped handing them out at their presentations, and if you ask for one, you probably get the answer that the paper is under review for a journal and can thus not be distributed. Hm.
The problem is of course that conference proceedings count as publications. As to say, there is a copyright issue with journals, and an issue of (self-)plagiarising. Plus it compromises the blind review process of a journal if everyone knows the paper and the author. Herbert’s own suggestion is to include the discussion at the conference as well as the presentation slides in the proceedings. But what about having papers in proceedings and then revising them substantially before submitting to a journal? The discussion should actually lead to something after all.
Gyöngyi
