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Chapter 26
How to Write a Conference Report

Conference: a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together decide that nothing can be done.
—Fred Allen

Definition

A conference report can be one of many kinds. However, let us make a few assumptions and, from these, try to devise
a picture of what a more-or-less typical conference report should look like.

It all starts, of course, when you are invited to participate in a conference (congress, symposium, workshop, panel
discussion, seminar, colloquium), the proceedings of which will be published. At that early time, you should stop to
ask yourself, and the conference convener or editor, exactly what is involved with the publication.

The biggest question, yet one that is often left cloudy, is whether the proceedings volume will be defined as primary.
If you or other participants present previously unpublished data, the question arises (or at least it should) as to whether
data published in the proceedings have been validly published, thus precluding later republication in a primary
journal.

As more and more scientists, and their societies, become aware of the need to define their publications, there will be
fewer problems. For one

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thing, conferences have become so popular in recent years that the conference report literature has become a very
substantial portion of the total literature in many areas of science.

The clear trend, I think, is to define conference reports as not validly published primary data. This is seemingly in
recognition of three important considerations: (1) Most conference proceedings are one-shot, ephemeral publications,
not purchased widely by science libraries around the world; thus, because of limited circulation and availability, they
fail one of the fundamental tests of valid publication. (2) Most conference reports are essentially review papers, which
do not qualify as primary publications, or they are preliminary reports presenting data and concepts that may still be
tentative or inconclusive and which the scientist would not yet dare to contribute to a primary publication. (3)
Conference reports are normally not subjected to peer review or to more than minimal editing; therefore, because of
the lack of any real quality control, many reputable publishers now define proceedings volumes as nonprimary. (There
are of course exceptions. Some conference proceedings are rigorously edited, and their prestige is the equal of primary
journals. Indeed, some conference proceedings appear as issues of journals.)

This is important to you, so that you can determine whether or not your data will be buried in an obscure proceedings
volume. It also answers in large measure how you should write the report. If the proceedings volume is adjudged to be
primary, you should (and the editor will no doubt so indicate) prepare your manuscript in journal style. You should
give full experimental detail, and you should present both your data and your discussion of the data as circumspectly
as you would in a prestigious journal.

If, on the other hand, you are contributing to a proceedings volume that is not a primary publication, your style of
writing may be (and should be) quite different. The fundamental requirement of reproducibility, inherent in a primary
publication, may now be ignored. You need not, and probably should not, have a Materials and Methods section.
Certainly, you need not provide the intricate detail that might be required for a peer to reproduce the experiments.

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