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Nor is it necessary to provide the usual literature review. Your later journal article will carefully fit your results into
the preexisting fabric of science; your conference report should be designed to give the news and

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the speculation for today's audience. Only the primary journal need serve as the official repository.

Format

If your conference report is not a primary scientific paper, just how should it differ from the usual scientific paper?

A conference report is often limited to one or two printed pages, or 1,000 to 2,000 words. Usually, authors can be
provided with a simple formula, such as "up to five manuscript pages, double-spaced, and not more than three
illustrations (any combination of tables, graphs, or photographs)."

Presenting the New Ideas

As stated above, the conference report can be relatively short because most of the experimental detail and much of the
literature review can be eliminated. In addition, the results can usually be presented in brief form. Because the full
results will presumably be published later in a primary journal, only the highlights need be presented in the
conference report.

On the other hand, the conference report might give greater space to speculation. Editors of primary journals can get
quite nervous about discussion of theories and possibilities that are not thoroughly buttressed by the data. The
conference report, however, should serve the purpose of the true preliminary report; it should present and encourage
speculation, alternative theories, and suggestions for future research.

Conferences themselves can be exciting precisely because they do serve as the forum for presentation of the very
newest ideas. If the ideas are truly new, they are not yet fully tested. They may not hold water. Therefore, the typical
scientific conference should be designed as a sounding board, and the published proceedings should reflect that
ambience. The strict controls of stern editors and peer review are fine for the primary journal but are out of place for
the conference literature.

The typical conference report, therefore, need not follow the usual Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results,
Discussion progression that is standard for the primary research paper. Instead, an abbreviated approach may be used.
The problem is stated; the methodology used is stated (but not described in detail); and the results are presented
briefly,

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with one, two, or three tables or figures. Then, the meaning of the results is speculated about, often at considerable
length. The literature review most likely involves description of related or planned experiments in the author's own
laboratory or in the laboratories of colleagues who are currently working on related problems.

Editing and Publishing

Finally, it is only necessary to remind you that the editor of the proceedings, usually the convener of the conference, is
the sole arbiter of questions relating to manuscript preparation. If the editor has distributed Instructions to Authors,
you should follow them (assuming that you want to be invited to other conferences). You may not have to worry about

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