case study conference paper

May 8-13, 2021 Online Virtual Conference (originally Yokohama, Japan)

For Authors

Case studies, quick facts.

• Submission deadline: October 14th, 2020 at 12pm (noon) PT – Pacific Time
• Notification: December 11th, 2020 at 12pm (noon) PT – Pacific Time  
• Publication-ready deadline: December 22th, 2020 at 12pm (noon) PT – Pacific Time
• Video previews deadline (optional): January 29th, 2021 at 12pm (noon) PT – Pacific Time
• Online Submission: PCS Submission System
• Template: ACM Master Article Submission Templates (single column) 
• Authors are strongly encouraged to include an illustrative Video (5 minutes maximum, recommended 2-3 minutes) in 1080p H264 mp4 format to better explain what they did and what they learned. 
• Submissions are not anonymous and should include all author names, affiliations, and contact information.

Best Case Study Award

• 4730 " Onboarding Materials as Cross-functional Boundary Objects for Developing AI Assistants "
• 9116 " Merging SaaS Products In A User-Centered Way --- A Case Study of Overleaf and ShareLaTeX "

What is a Case Study?

• Design to support a specific type of experience, discussing its rationale and lessons learned
• Research of a specific domain, user group, or experience, discussing its insights and lessons learned
• Domain-specific topics, especially lesser known but important domains of interest
• Management and strategy of research (either academic research or user research) and design in organizations
• Pilot studies preceding and informing larger-scale investigations
• Application, critique, or evolution of a method, process, or tool
• Innovation through Research or Design (disruptive or otherwise)
• Practical issues associated with HCI Teaching and Learning in education, training, or knowledge sharing

Preparing and Submitting your Case Study

• Extended Abstract (the paper). The primary submission material consists of an extended abstract in the ACM Master Article Submission Templates (single column; 4-10 pages). Note that we eliminate the old CHI extended abstract format (landscape) and use the same format as full papers. The extended abstract should describe the authors’ experience, focusing on the lessons you want readers to take away from the presentation. Your extended abstract must stand alone; readers must be able to understand the Case Study with only this material.
• Supplementary material. You may augment the extended abstract with additional material. Typical supporting materials include videos, documents (e.g., pictures beyond those included in the extended abstract) or interactive media (e.g., interactive prototypes). Authors who submit supplementary materials should also include a list of the supplementary items in their submission. This should explain the nature and purpose of each item submitted. (The list is not part of the extended abstract.)

Authors are strongly encouraged to work on improving the accessibility of their submissions, using recommendations found in the Guide to an Accessible Submission .

Case Study Selection Process

• tells a convincing story of a real-world experience of HCI practice that will be instructive and of interest to other members of the HCI community
• reflects on the experience, and describes why the case study is of importance
• advances the state of the practice
• clearly outlines any limitations of the report as well as of the activity described.

On Acceptance of your Case Study

At the conference, after the conference, recent updates.

• May 10, 2021 Allyship Fireside Chat
• May 9, 2021 CHI 2021 Virtual Platform Time Zone Problems
• April 30, 2021 BLInner Blog #2 - Schedule, Chefs, and Recipes Update
• March 28, 2021 Captions are Required for CHI Video Presentations
• March 24, 2021 CHI 2021 Awards

Conference Papers

What this handout is about.

This handout outlines strategies for writing and presenting papers for academic conferences.

What’s special about conference papers?

Conference papers can be an effective way to try out new ideas, introduce your work to colleagues, and hone your research questions. Presenting at a conference is a great opportunity for gaining valuable feedback from a community of scholars and for increasing your professional stature in your field.

A conference paper is often both a written document and an oral presentation. You may be asked to submit a copy of your paper to a commentator before you present at the conference. Thus, your paper should follow the conventions for academic papers and oral presentations.

Preparing to write your conference paper

There are several factors to consider as you get started on your conference paper.

Determine the structure and style

How will you structure your presentation? This is an important question, because your presentation format will shape your written document. Some possibilities for your session include:

• A visual presentation, including software such as PowerPoint or Prezi
• A paper that you read aloud
• A roundtable discussion

Presentations can be a combination of these styles. For example, you might read a paper aloud while displaying images. Following your paper, you might participate in an informal conversation with your fellow presenters.

You will also need to know how long your paper should be. Presentations are usually 15-20 minutes. A general rule of thumb is that one double-spaced page takes 2-2.5 minutes to read out loud. Thus an 8-10 page, double-spaced paper is often a good fit for a 15-20 minute presentation. Adhere to the time limit.  Make sure that your written paper conforms to the presentation constraints.

Consider the conventions of the conference and the structure of your session

It is important to meet the expectations of your conference audience. Have you been to an academic conference previously?  How were presentations structured? What kinds of presentations did you find most effective? What do you know about the particular conference you are planning to attend? Some professional organizations have their own rules and suggestions for writing and presenting for their conferences. Make sure to find out what they are and stick to them.

If you proposed a panel with other scholars, then you should already have a good idea of your panel’s expectations. However, if you submitted your paper individually and the conference organizers placed it on a panel with other papers, you will need additional information.

Will there be a commentator? Commentators, also called respondents or discussants, can be great additions to panels, since their job is to pull the papers together and pose questions. If there will be a commentator, be sure to know when they would like to have a copy of your paper. Observe this deadline.

You may also want to find out what your fellow presenters will be talking about. Will you circulate your papers among the other panelists prior to the conference? Will your papers address common themes? Will you discuss intersections with each other’s work after your individual presentations? How collaborative do you want your panel to be?

Analyze your audience

Knowing your audience is critical for any writing assignment, but conference papers are special because you will be physically interacting with them. Take a look at our handout on audience . Anticipating the needs of your listeners will help you write a conference paper that connects your specific research to their broader concerns in a compelling way.

What are the concerns of the conference?

You can identify these by revisiting the call for proposals and reviewing the mission statement or theme of the conference. What key words or concepts are repeated? How does your work relate to these larger research questions? If you choose to orient your paper toward one of these themes, make sure there is a genuine relationship. Superficial use of key terms can weaken your paper.

What are the primary concerns of the field?

How do you bridge the gap between your research and your field’s broader concerns? Finding these linkages is part of the brainstorming process. See our handout on brainstorming . If you are presenting at a conference that is within your primary field, you should be familiar with leading concerns and questions. If you will be attending an interdisciplinary conference or a conference outside of your field, or if you simply need to refresh your knowledge of what’s current in your discipline, you can:

• Read recently published journals and books, including recent publications by the conference’s featured speakers
• Talk to people who have been to the conference
• Pay attention to questions about theory and method. What questions come up in the literature? What foundational texts should you be familiar with?
• Review the initial research questions that inspired your project. Think about the big questions in the secondary literature of your field.
• Try a free-writing exercise. Imagine that you are explaining your project to someone who is in your department, but is unfamiliar with your specific topic. What can you assume they already know? Where will you need to start in your explanation? How will you establish common ground?

Contextualizing your narrow research question within larger trends in the field will help you connect with your audience.  You might be really excited about a previously unknown nineteenth-century poet. But will your topic engage others?  You don’t want people to leave your presentation, thinking, “What was the point of that?” By carefully analyzing your audience and considering the concerns of the conference and the field, you can present a paper that will have your listeners thinking, “Wow! Why haven’t I heard about that obscure poet before? She is really important for understanding developments in Romantic poetry in the 1800s!”

Writing your conference paper

I have a really great research paper/manuscript/dissertation chapter on this same topic. Should I cut and paste?

Be careful here. Time constraints and the needs of your audience may require a tightly focused and limited message. To create a paper tailored to the conference, you might want to set everything aside and create a brand new document.  Don’t worry—you will still have that paper, manuscript, or chapter if you need it. But you will also benefit from taking a fresh look at your research.

Citing sources

Since your conference paper will be part of an oral presentation, there are special considerations for citations. You should observe the conventions of your discipline with regard to including citations in your written paper. However, you will also need to incorporate verbal cues to set your evidence and quotations off from your text when presenting. For example, you can say: “As Nietzsche said, quote, ‘And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you,’ end quote.” If you use multiple quotations in your paper, think about omitting the terms “quote” and “end quote,” as these can become repetitive. Instead, signal quotations through the inflection of your voice or with strategic pauses.

Organizing the paper

There are numerous ways to effectively organize your conference paper, but remember to have a focused message that fits the time constraints and meets the needs of your audience. You can begin by connecting your research to the audience’s concerns, then share a few examples/case studies from your research, and then, in conclusion, broaden the discussion back out to general issues in the field.

Don’t overwhelm or confuse your audience

You should limit the information that you present. Don’t attempt to summarize your entire dissertation in 10 pages. Instead, try selecting main points and provide examples to support those points. Alternatively, you might focus on one main idea or case study and use 2-4 examples to explain it.

Check for clarity in the text

One way to anticipate how your ideas will sound is to read your paper out loud. Reading out loud is an excellent proofreading technique and is a great way to check the clarity of your ideas; you are likely to hear problems that you didn’t notice in just scanning your draft.  Help listeners understand your ideas by making sure that subjects and verbs are clear and by avoiding unnecessarily complex sentences.

Include verbal cues in the text

Make liberal use of transitional phrases like however, therefore, and thus, as well as signpost words like first, next, etc.

If you have 5 main points, say so at the beginning and list those 5 ideas. Refer back to this structure frequently as you transition between sections (“Now, I will discuss my fourth point, the importance of plasma”).

Use a phrase like “I argue” to announce your thesis statement. Be sure that there is only one of these phrases—otherwise your audience will be confused about your central message.

Refer back to the structure, and signal moments where you are transitioning to a new topic: “I just talked about x, now I’m going to talk about y.”

I’ve written my conference paper, now what?

Now that you’ve drafted your conference paper, it’s time for the most important part—delivering it before an audience of scholars in your field!  Remember that writing the paper is only one half of what a conference paper entails. It is both a written text and a presentation.

With preparation, your presentation will be a success. Here are a few tips for an effective presentation. You can also see our handout on speeches .

Cues to yourself

Include helpful hints in your personal copy of the paper. You can remind yourself to pause, look up and make eye contact with your audience, or employ body language to enhance your message. If you are using a slideshow, you can indicate when to change slides. Increasing the font size to 14-16 pt. can make your paper easier to read.

Practice, practice, practice

When you practice, time yourself. Are you reading too fast? Are you enunciating clearly? Do you know how to pronounce all of the words in your paper? Record your talk and critically listen to yourself. Practice in front of friends and colleagues.

If you are using technology, familiarize yourself with it. Check and double-check your images. Remember, they are part of your presentation and should be proofread just like your paper.  Print a backup copy of your images and paper, and bring copies of your materials in multiple formats, just in case.  Be sure to check with the conference organizers about available technology.

Professionalism

The written text is only one aspect of the overall conference paper. The other is your presentation. This means that your audience will evaluate both your work and you! So remember to convey the appropriate level of professionalism.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Adler, Abby. 2010. “Talking the Talk: Tips on Giving a Successful Conference Presentation.” Psychological Science Agenda 24 (4).

Kerber, Linda K. 2008. “Conference Rules: How to Present a Scholarly Paper.” The Chronicle of Higher Education , March 21, 2008. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Conference-Rules-How-to/45734 .

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Make a Gift

• How to Join
• ProComm Leadership Team
• Our Vision and Mission
• Membership Information
• Constitution
• ProComm Conferences
• ProComm 2024
• Past Conferences
• Future Conference Locations
• About the Journal
• Submitting a Manuscript
• Search Articles on IEEE Xplore
• Videos for Transactions Peer Reviewers
• English, Chinese, and Spanish Abstracts
• IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication Editorial Staff
• Classics in Communication
• The Wiley-IEEE PCS Book Series
• IPCC Proceedings (IEEE Xplore)
• About the Communication Resources
• Interpersonal
• Style and Grammar
• Written Reporting
• Oral Presentation
• Career Development
• Rhetorical Strategies
• Become a ProComm Expert
• ProComm Network Events
• Find a ProComm Expert
• About Division VI
• IEEE Education Society
• IEEE Industrial Electronics Society
• IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society
• IEEE Reliability Society
• IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology
• IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society

Guideli nes for Case Studies  |  Samples of Case Studies Published in the Transactions | Reviewers’ Expectations

About Case Studies:

At the top of the list of preferred formats by readers, case studies report on a specific real-world communication project from start to finish, including results of the project.  Examples of projects include the use of content strategy techniques to redesign a major website, a complex engineering document that can be tailored to different audiences, a novel approach to customer documentation, and  user- or Subject-Matter-Expert-generated documentation.

The case can emerge from empirical research or experience; we only ask that authors clearly indicate the nature of the data. The project must be a real-world project.

Guidelines for Case Studies

Note : We recognize that, in our effort to focus on readers and be clear with authors, our guidelines are extensive and directive. We hope, however, this detailed guidance provides authors with the strongest possible guidance and ensures the most positive outcome possible from the peer-review process.

Samples of Case Studies Published in the Transactions

K. Siebenhandl, G. Schreder, M. Smuc, E. Mayr, & M. Nagl, “A user-centered design approach to self-service ticket vending machines,” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication , vol. 56, no. 2, 138-159, 2013.

R. Raju, “Intercultural communication training in IT outsourcing companies in India: A case study,” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, vol. 55, no. 3, 262-274, 2012.

[Note that a subscription is required to view the article.  If you do not already have a subscription, your library might.]

Reviewers’ Expectations

To learn about the criteria that reviewers consider when providing feedback on a case study,  click here .

Home » For Authors » Case Studies

Conference Program

CHI 2020 Free Proceedings

CHI 2020 Extended Abstracts

CHI 2020 Program

Recent Updates

• CHI 2020 Remote Presentations 17th June 2020
• CHI 2020 update 25th March 2020
• CHI 2020 reimbursement policy 20th March 2020

Past Deadlines

> august 1st, 2019.

SIGCHI Student Travel Grant

> September 13th, 2019

Papers : Title, abstract, authors, subcommittee choice, and all other metadata

> September 20th, 2019

Papers : Submission files

> October 16th, 2019

Case Studies , Courses , Doctoral Consortium , Workshops/Symposia

> November 15th, 2019

Gary Marsden Student Development Fund

> December 18th, 2019

Special Interest Groups , Panels

> January 6th, 2020

Alt.CHI , Interactivity/Demos , Late-Breaking Works ,  Student Game Competition , Student Research Competition

> February 15th, 2020

Case studies, quick facts.

Important Dates:

• Submission deadline: October 16th, 2019 at 12pm (noon) PT – Pacific Time
• Notification: December 2nd, 2019
• Publication-ready deadline: December 16th, 2019 at 12pm (noon) PT – Pacific Time
• Video previews deadline (optional): January 21st, 2020 at 12pm (noon) PT – Pacific Time

Submission Details:

• Online Submission: PCS Submission System
• Template: Extended Abstracts Format

Submission Format: 2-8 page paper (Extended Abstract format) describing your case study. Must include the following sections:

• ACM Classification
• Author Keywords
• Method: What we did (2-3 sentences minimum)
• Findings: What we learned (1 paragraph minimum)
• Discussion: What it means, how others might use the findings, implications for practice
• Conclusion & What’s next
• References do count towards page length — i.e., references may not spill over onto a 9th page.
• Authors are strongly encouraged to include an illustrative Video (5 minutes maximum, recommended 2-3 minutes) in 1080p H264 mp4 format to better explain what they did and what they learned. Submissions that do not include a video must comprise at least 4 pages of extended abstract.
• Submissions are not anonymous and should include all author names, affiliations, and contact information.

Selection process: Juried

Chairs: Stefan Manojlovic, Maja Vukovic ( [email protected] )

At the conference: Accepted Case Studies will be presented at the conference in 15-minute time slots assigned by the conference committee. Authors should share their video as part of their presentation (up to 5 minutes) and plan to spend roughly half of their time answering questions and participating in discussion about their case study. Authors might be asked to focus on particular aspects of their case study (e.g., surprises, learnings, implications for practice) during their presentation to maximise the benefits of the presentation to conference attendees.

After the conference: Case study extended abstracts will appear in the Extended Abstracts proceedings in the ACM Digital Library.

What is a Case Study?

Case Studies are compelling stories about HCI practice based on real-world experiences that will be instructive and of interest to other members of the community. Based on the concrete cases of research and design, HCI practitioners and researchers will learn how HCI principles and methods can be applied in practical HCI work.

Case Studies should describe how a problem was addressed by HCI work carried out. They should describe the challenges experienced and how they were tackled, reflect on the experience, what could have been improved, and describe why the case study is of importance to the HCI community. Case Studies can also inspire HCI researchers to further investigate issues that arise from practical research and design work. Case Studies can illustrate, explore, report, analyze, summarize, challenge, or simply describe practical HCI work carried out to address a problem. They might focus, for instance, on the following topics:

• Design to support a specific type of experience, discussing its rationale and lessons learned
• Research of a specific domain, user group, or experience, discussing its insights and lessons learned
• Domain-specific topics, especially lesser known but important domains of interest
• Management and strategy of research (either academic research or user research) and design in organizations
• Pilot studies preceding and informing larger-scale investigations
• Application, critique, or evolution of a method, process, or tool
• Innovation through Research or Design (disruptive or otherwise)
• Practical issues associated with HCI Teaching and Learning in education, training, or knowledge sharing

Case Studies differ from archival research papers in that Case Studies do not need to define themselves as part of the potentially longer-term body of academic research. Case Studies are not considered academic archival publications, but can be republished as such, as appropriate. They might not have as extensive a literature review as archival research papers, or might not explicitly add to HCI theory within an academic school of thought.

Best Case Study Award

The SIGCHI “Best of CHI” awards honor exceptional submissions to SIGCHI sponsored conferences. Based on reviewer recommendations, the CHI Case Study chairs nominates submissions for the Best Case Study Award, as appropriate.

Preparing and Submitting your Case Study

A Case Study must be submitted via the PCS Submission System . The Case Study submission must have an extended abstract, and can also have supplementary material. We strongly encourage including a video as supplementary material.

• Extended Abstract (the paper). The primary submission material consists of an extended abstract in the Extended Abstract Format (2-8 pages). The extended abstract should describe the authors’ experience, focusing on the lessons you want readers to take away from the presentation. Your extended abstract must stand alone; readers must be able to understand the Case Study with only this material.
• Supplementary material. You may augment the extended abstract with additional material. Typical supporting materials include videos, documents (e.g., pictures beyond those included in the extended abstract) or interactive media (e.g., interactive prototypes). Authors who submit supplementary materials should also include a list of the supplementary items in their submission. This should explain the nature and purpose of each item submitted. (The list is not part of the extended abstract.)

Case Study Selection Process

The evaluation of submissions will not be constrained by traditional academic expectations, but will be based on the significance of the Case Study’s contribution to the field of HCI practice and on how compelling the story of the Case Study is told. Accepted submissions will be chosen on the merit and contribution of the report, not only on the quality of the outcome that it describes. This means that a valuable lesson learned from a poor outcome is just as acceptable as a valuable lesson learned from a good result.

Submissions will be reviewed by an expert panel of HCI practitioners and practitioner researchers. Authors will receive the reviews of their submissions after the decisions are announced, and should keep in mind that the Case Studies program is a Juried contribution and thus does not follow the strict peer-review process as applied to Papers. In particular, the Case Study review process does not allow authors the opportunity to submit rebuttals.

Specifically, the review criteria will be the extent to which the case study report accomplishes the following:

• tells a convincing story of a real-world experience of HCI practice that will be instructive and of interest to other members of the HCI community
• reflects on the experience, and describes why the case study is of importance
• advances the state of the practice
• clearly outlines any limitations of the report as well as of the activity described.

The extended abstract should contain no sensitive, private, or proprietary information that cannot be disclosed at publication time. Submissions may NOT be anonymous. However, confidentiality of submissions will be maintained during the review process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential. All submitted materials for accepted submissions will be kept confidential until the start of the conference, with the exception of title and author information which will be published on the website prior to the conference.

On Acceptance of your Case Study

Accepted submissions will include instructions on how to prepare and submit the publication-ready version.

At the Conference

Participants will be given a slot for presenting their case study during a scheduled session. Each accepted case study will be given 15 minutes including questions for their presentation. Authors might be asked to focus on particular aspects of their case study during their presentation to maximise the benefits of the presentation to conference attendees.

Please see the Guide to a Successful Presentation for information about standard computing and A/V equipment that will be made available to presenters at CHI 2020. The Best Case Study award will be announced at the conference.

After the Conference

Accepted Case Studies will be distributed in the CHI Extended Abstracts, available in the ACM Digital Library. Videos will be attached.

© 2024 | ACM SIGCHI - ACM Privacy Policy

Case studies for software engineers

Ieee account.

• Change Username/Password
• Update Address

Purchase Details

• Payment Options
• Order History
• View Purchased Documents

Profile Information

• Communications Preferences
• Profession and Education
• Technical Interests
• US & Canada: +1 800 678 4333
• Worldwide: +1 732 981 0060
• Contact & Support
• About IEEE Xplore
• Accessibility
• Terms of Use
• Nondiscrimination Policy
• Privacy & Opting Out of Cookies

A not-for-profit organization, IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. © Copyright 2024 IEEE - All rights reserved. Use of this web site signifies your agreement to the terms and conditions.

COVID-19 Effects on Higher Education: A Case Study

Download Paper | Permalink

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Virtual Conference

July 26, 2021

July 19, 2022

Engineering Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Educational Research and Methods

10.18260/1-2--36857

https://strategy.asee.org/36857

Paper Authors

Boshra karimi northern kentucky university.

visit author page

Dr. Boshra Karimi is an Assistant Professor of Construction Management at Northern Kentucky University. She received the Ph.D. degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering (Construction Management) from Oklahoma State University, the MSc degree in Industrial Engineering and Management from Sharif University of Technology, and the BSc degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Tehran. She has over 10 years of experience in teaching and research. Prior to joining NKU as an Assistant Professor, she worked as a visiting instructor in the School of International Studies and Outreach and as a teaching associate in the School of Construction Management Technology at Oklahoma State University. She has also worked as an instructor at Ershad Damavand University. In addition, she has over 14 years of experience in industry. Her research interests include sustainable project management, sustainability assessment, sustainable technology implementation, supply chain management, decision-making modeling, and big data application in construction. Her research has been published in several peer reviewed journals and presented at international conferences. Dr. Karimi has received numerous awards and recognitions including “ Summer Fellowship Award” in 2019 and 2020, “Robberson Summer Research and Creative Activity Fellowship” in 2017, “Calvin & Marilyn Vogt Endowed Scholarship” in 2016, “Outstanding Teaching Performance Award” in 2014 & 2015, and “Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Scholarship” in 2014.

Mahdi Yazdanpour Northern Kentucky University

Dr. Mahdi Yazdanpour is an Assistant Professor of Mechatronics Engineering Technology at Northern Kentucky University. He is also the advisor of the Norse Robotics Club (NRC) and IEEE student chapter at NKU. Dr. Yazdanpour received the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from Oklahoma State University, the MSc degree in Industrial Engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), and the BSc degree in Computer Engineering from Qazvin Azad University. He has over 11 years of experience in manufacturing industry. He has worked as a Process Quality Manager, Planning & Quality Systems Manager, Production Planning & Control Manager, and Material Control Supervisor at MAPNA and NeyrePerse industrial groups. His research interests include Intelligent Mechatronic Systems, Medical Robotics, Companion Robots, Brain-Controlled Robots, Computer Vision, 3D Scene Reconstruction, and Machine Vision. His current research is focused on designing and implementation of the gesture and mind-controlled robotic systems. His research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at international conferences. Dr. Yazdanpour has received numerous awards and recognitions including “The Best Paper Award in 15th IEEE Workshop on PBVS in conjunction with CVPR” in 2019, “CEAT Dean’s Outstanding ECE Graduate Student Award” in 2018, “The FGSH Research Award” in 2017, “Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Scholarship” in 2017, “CEAT Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award” in 2016, and “Calvin & Marilyn Vogt Endowed Scholarship Award” in 2016.

Phil Lewis Texas A&M University

Dr. Lewis is an Associate Professor and Associate Department Head in the Department of Construction Science as Texas A&M University. He also serves as the Graduate Program coordinator for the Department. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in construction management. His primary research focus area is the economic, environmental, and energy impacts of construction.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected higher education across the country. Many colleges and universities responded swiftly to this outbreak by moving to remote learning in order to cope with the pandemic. The responses varied in different education systems at national and international levels, but a commonality can be found between the most institutions worldwide: transitioning delivery mode from face-to-face teaching to remote learning approaches using online platforms. Although this new remote teaching format was different from classic online pedagogy in many cases, it was the beginning of a new era in higher education to establish or expand the necessary infrastructure for online education. Unfortunately, many college students encountered some difficulties due to this fast transition in addition to facing personal challenges such as unexpected job loss, restricted social activities, and mental health conditions, such as anxiety, depression, etc. Studies show that psychological distress and symptoms of mental illness in college students have been dramatically increased due to social isolation result of campus closure since the pandemic started. In this research, we conducted two surveys to evaluate how students have been impacted by the outbreak. The intended outcome of our research is to prepare a better plan to mitigate the effects of pandemic on students’ educational experience and performance. This study measures different aspects of college students’ demands such as satisfaction with their classes, connectedness to the university, learning requirements, and technology resources. Furthermore, a Chi-Square test was deployed to compare these impacts on students in terms of gender and personality. The finding of these surveys demonstrate that the pandemic had greater mental impact on female students, however introverted and extroverted students have expressed similar experience. In addition, this research shows that all academic levels have been impacted by the pandemic to some extent.

APA - LaTeX bibitem

Mla - latex bibitem, endnote - ris.

Karimi, B., & Yazdanpour, M., & Lewis, P. (2021, July), COVID-19 Effects on Higher Education: A Case Study Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--36857

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2021 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Assignments

• Annotated Bibliography
• Analyzing a Scholarly Journal Article
• Group Presentations
• Dealing with Nervousness
• Using Visual Aids
• Grading Someone Else's Paper
• Types of Structured Group Activities
• Group Project Survival Skills
• Leading a Class Discussion
• Multiple Book Review Essay
• Reviewing Collected Works
• Writing a Case Analysis Paper
• Writing a Case Study
• About Informed Consent
• Writing Field Notes
• Writing a Policy Memo
• Writing a Reflective Paper
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Generative AI and Writing
• Acknowledgments

Definition and Introduction

Case analysis is a problem-based teaching and learning method that involves critically analyzing complex scenarios within an organizational setting for the purpose of placing the student in a “real world” situation and applying reflection and critical thinking skills to contemplate appropriate solutions, decisions, or recommended courses of action. It is considered a more effective teaching technique than in-class role playing or simulation activities. The analytical process is often guided by questions provided by the instructor that ask students to contemplate relationships between the facts and critical incidents described in the case.

Cases generally include both descriptive and statistical elements and rely on students applying abductive reasoning to develop and argue for preferred or best outcomes [i.e., case scenarios rarely have a single correct or perfect answer based on the evidence provided]. Rather than emphasizing theories or concepts, case analysis assignments emphasize building a bridge of relevancy between abstract thinking and practical application and, by so doing, teaches the value of both within a specific area of professional practice.

Given this, the purpose of a case analysis paper is to present a structured and logically organized format for analyzing the case situation. It can be assigned to students individually or as a small group assignment and it may include an in-class presentation component. Case analysis is predominately taught in economics and business-related courses, but it is also a method of teaching and learning found in other applied social sciences disciplines, such as, social work, public relations, education, journalism, and public administration.

Ellet, William. The Case Study Handbook: A Student's Guide . Revised Edition. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2018; Christoph Rasche and Achim Seisreiner. Guidelines for Business Case Analysis . University of Potsdam; Writing a Case Analysis . Writing Center, Baruch College; Volpe, Guglielmo. "Case Teaching in Economics: History, Practice and Evidence." Cogent Economics and Finance 3 (December 2015). doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/23322039.2015.1120977.

How to Approach Writing a Case Analysis Paper

The organization and structure of a case analysis paper can vary depending on the organizational setting, the situation, and how your professor wants you to approach the assignment. Nevertheless, preparing to write a case analysis paper involves several important steps. As Hawes notes, a case analysis assignment “...is useful in developing the ability to get to the heart of a problem, analyze it thoroughly, and to indicate the appropriate solution as well as how it should be implemented” [p.48]. This statement encapsulates how you should approach preparing to write a case analysis paper.

Before you begin to write your paper, consider the following analytical procedures:

• Review the case to get an overview of the situation . A case can be only a few pages in length, however, it is most often very lengthy and contains a significant amount of detailed background information and statistics, with multilayered descriptions of the scenario, the roles and behaviors of various stakeholder groups, and situational events. Therefore, a quick reading of the case will help you gain an overall sense of the situation and illuminate the types of issues and problems that you will need to address in your paper. If your professor has provided questions intended to help frame your analysis, use them to guide your initial reading of the case.
• Read the case thoroughly . After gaining a general overview of the case, carefully read the content again with the purpose of understanding key circumstances, events, and behaviors among stakeholder groups. Look for information or data that appears contradictory, extraneous, or misleading. At this point, you should be taking notes as you read because this will help you develop a general outline of your paper. The aim is to obtain a complete understanding of the situation so that you can begin contemplating tentative answers to any questions your professor has provided or, if they have not provided, developing answers to your own questions about the case scenario and its connection to the course readings,lectures, and class discussions.
• Determine key stakeholder groups, issues, and events and the relationships they all have to each other . As you analyze the content, pay particular attention to identifying individuals, groups, or organizations described in the case and identify evidence of any problems or issues of concern that impact the situation in a negative way. Other things to look for include identifying any assumptions being made by or about each stakeholder, potential biased explanations or actions, explicit demands or ultimatums , and the underlying concerns that motivate these behaviors among stakeholders. The goal at this stage is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the situational and behavioral dynamics of the case and the explicit and implicit consequences of each of these actions.
• Identify the core problems . The next step in most case analysis assignments is to discern what the core [i.e., most damaging, detrimental, injurious] problems are within the organizational setting and to determine their implications. The purpose at this stage of preparing to write your analysis paper is to distinguish between the symptoms of core problems and the core problems themselves and to decide which of these must be addressed immediately and which problems do not appear critical but may escalate over time. Identify evidence from the case to support your decisions by determining what information or data is essential to addressing the core problems and what information is not relevant or is misleading.
• Explore alternative solutions . As noted, case analysis scenarios rarely have only one correct answer. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that the process of analyzing the case and diagnosing core problems, while based on evidence, is a subjective process open to various avenues of interpretation. This means that you must consider alternative solutions or courses of action by critically examining strengths and weaknesses, risk factors, and the differences between short and long-term solutions. For each possible solution or course of action, consider the consequences they may have related to their implementation and how these recommendations might lead to new problems. Also, consider thinking about your recommended solutions or courses of action in relation to issues of fairness, equity, and inclusion.
• Decide on a final set of recommendations . The last stage in preparing to write a case analysis paper is to assert an opinion or viewpoint about the recommendations needed to help resolve the core problems as you see them and to make a persuasive argument for supporting this point of view. Prepare a clear rationale for your recommendations based on examining each element of your analysis. Anticipate possible obstacles that could derail their implementation. Consider any counter-arguments that could be made concerning the validity of your recommended actions. Finally, describe a set of criteria and measurable indicators that could be applied to evaluating the effectiveness of your implementation plan.

Use these steps as the framework for writing your paper. Remember that the more detailed you are in taking notes as you critically examine each element of the case, the more information you will have to draw from when you begin to write. This will save you time.

NOTE : If the process of preparing to write a case analysis paper is assigned as a student group project, consider having each member of the group analyze a specific element of the case, including drafting answers to the corresponding questions used by your professor to frame the analysis. This will help make the analytical process more efficient and ensure that the distribution of work is equitable. This can also facilitate who is responsible for drafting each part of the final case analysis paper and, if applicable, the in-class presentation.

Framework for Case Analysis . College of Management. University of Massachusetts; Hawes, Jon M. "Teaching is Not Telling: The Case Method as a Form of Interactive Learning." Journal for Advancement of Marketing Education 5 (Winter 2004): 47-54; Rasche, Christoph and Achim Seisreiner. Guidelines for Business Case Analysis . University of Potsdam; Writing a Case Study Analysis . University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Center; Van Ness, Raymond K. A Guide to Case Analysis . School of Business. State University of New York, Albany; Writing a Case Analysis . Business School, University of New South Wales.

Structure and Writing Style

A case analysis paper should be detailed, concise, persuasive, clearly written, and professional in tone and in the use of language . As with other forms of college-level academic writing, declarative statements that convey information, provide a fact, or offer an explanation or any recommended courses of action should be based on evidence. If allowed by your professor, any external sources used to support your analysis, such as course readings, should be properly cited under a list of references. The organization and structure of case analysis papers can vary depending on your professor’s preferred format, but its structure generally follows the steps used for analyzing the case.

Introduction

The introduction should provide a succinct but thorough descriptive overview of the main facts, issues, and core problems of the case . The introduction should also include a brief summary of the most relevant details about the situation and organizational setting. This includes defining the theoretical framework or conceptual model on which any questions were used to frame your analysis.

Following the rules of most college-level research papers, the introduction should then inform the reader how the paper will be organized. This includes describing the major sections of the paper and the order in which they will be presented. Unless you are told to do so by your professor, you do not need to preview your final recommendations in the introduction. U nlike most college-level research papers , the introduction does not include a statement about the significance of your findings because a case analysis assignment does not involve contributing new knowledge about a research problem.

Background Analysis

Background analysis can vary depending on any guiding questions provided by your professor and the underlying concept or theory that the case is based upon. In general, however, this section of your paper should focus on:

• Providing an overarching analysis of problems identified from the case scenario, including identifying events that stakeholders find challenging or troublesome,
• Identifying assumptions made by each stakeholder and any apparent biases they may exhibit,
• Describing any demands or claims made by or forced upon key stakeholders, and
• Highlighting any issues of concern or complaints expressed by stakeholders in response to those demands or claims.

These aspects of the case are often in the form of behavioral responses expressed by individuals or groups within the organizational setting. However, note that problems in a case situation can also be reflected in data [or the lack thereof] and in the decision-making, operational, cultural, or institutional structure of the organization. Additionally, demands or claims can be either internal and external to the organization [e.g., a case analysis involving a president considering arms sales to Saudi Arabia could include managing internal demands from White House advisors as well as demands from members of Congress].

Throughout this section, present all relevant evidence from the case that supports your analysis. Do not simply claim there is a problem, an assumption, a demand, or a concern; tell the reader what part of the case informed how you identified these background elements.

Identification of Problems

In most case analysis assignments, there are problems, and then there are problems . Each problem can reflect a multitude of underlying symptoms that are detrimental to the interests of the organization. The purpose of identifying problems is to teach students how to differentiate between problems that vary in severity, impact, and relative importance. Given this, problems can be described in three general forms: those that must be addressed immediately, those that should be addressed but the impact is not severe, and those that do not require immediate attention and can be set aside for the time being.

All of the problems you identify from the case should be identified in this section of your paper, with a description based on evidence explaining the problem variances. If the assignment asks you to conduct research to further support your assessment of the problems, include this in your explanation. Remember to cite those sources in a list of references. Use specific evidence from the case and apply appropriate concepts, theories, and models discussed in class or in relevant course readings to highlight and explain the key problems [or problem] that you believe must be solved immediately and describe the underlying symptoms and why they are so critical.

Alternative Solutions

This section is where you provide specific, realistic, and evidence-based solutions to the problems you have identified and make recommendations about how to alleviate the underlying symptomatic conditions impacting the organizational setting. For each solution, you must explain why it was chosen and provide clear evidence to support your reasoning. This can include, for example, course readings and class discussions as well as research resources, such as, books, journal articles, research reports, or government documents. In some cases, your professor may encourage you to include personal, anecdotal experiences as evidence to support why you chose a particular solution or set of solutions. Using anecdotal evidence helps promote reflective thinking about the process of determining what qualifies as a core problem and relevant solution .

Throughout this part of the paper, keep in mind the entire array of problems that must be addressed and describe in detail the solutions that might be implemented to resolve these problems.

Recommended Courses of Action

In some case analysis assignments, your professor may ask you to combine the alternative solutions section with your recommended courses of action. However, it is important to know the difference between the two. A solution refers to the answer to a problem. A course of action refers to a procedure or deliberate sequence of activities adopted to proactively confront a situation, often in the context of accomplishing a goal. In this context, proposed courses of action are based on your analysis of alternative solutions. Your description and justification for pursuing each course of action should represent the overall plan for implementing your recommendations.

For each course of action, you need to explain the rationale for your recommendation in a way that confronts challenges, explains risks, and anticipates any counter-arguments from stakeholders. Do this by considering the strengths and weaknesses of each course of action framed in relation to how the action is expected to resolve the core problems presented, the possible ways the action may affect remaining problems, and how the recommended action will be perceived by each stakeholder.

In addition, you should describe the criteria needed to measure how well the implementation of these actions is working and explain which individuals or groups are responsible for ensuring your recommendations are successful. In addition, always consider the law of unintended consequences. Outline difficulties that may arise in implementing each course of action and describe how implementing the proposed courses of action [either individually or collectively] may lead to new problems [both large and small].

Throughout this section, you must consider the costs and benefits of recommending your courses of action in relation to uncertainties or missing information and the negative consequences of success.

The conclusion should be brief and introspective. Unlike a research paper, the conclusion in a case analysis paper does not include a summary of key findings and their significance, a statement about how the study contributed to existing knowledge, or indicate opportunities for future research.

Begin by synthesizing the core problems presented in the case and the relevance of your recommended solutions. This can include an explanation of what you have learned about the case in the context of your answers to the questions provided by your professor. The conclusion is also where you link what you learned from analyzing the case with the course readings or class discussions. This can further demonstrate your understanding of the relationships between the practical case situation and the theoretical and abstract content of assigned readings and other course content.

Problems to Avoid

The literature on case analysis assignments often includes examples of difficulties students have with applying methods of critical analysis and effectively reporting the results of their assessment of the situation. A common reason cited by scholars is that the application of this type of teaching and learning method is limited to applied fields of social and behavioral sciences and, as a result, writing a case analysis paper can be unfamiliar to most students entering college.

After you have drafted your paper, proofread the narrative flow and revise any of these common errors:

• Unnecessary detail in the background section . The background section should highlight the essential elements of the case based on your analysis. Focus on summarizing the facts and highlighting the key factors that become relevant in the other sections of the paper by eliminating any unnecessary information.
• Analysis relies too much on opinion . Your analysis is interpretive, but the narrative must be connected clearly to evidence from the case and any models and theories discussed in class or in course readings. Any positions or arguments you make should be supported by evidence.
• Analysis does not focus on the most important elements of the case . Your paper should provide a thorough overview of the case. However, the analysis should focus on providing evidence about what you identify are the key events, stakeholders, issues, and problems. Emphasize what you identify as the most critical aspects of the case to be developed throughout your analysis. Be thorough but succinct.
• Writing is too descriptive . A paper with too much descriptive information detracts from your analysis of the complexities of the case situation. Questions about what happened, where, when, and by whom should only be included as essential information leading to your examination of questions related to why, how, and for what purpose.
• Inadequate definition of a core problem and associated symptoms . A common error found in case analysis papers is recommending a solution or course of action without adequately defining or demonstrating that you understand the problem. Make sure you have clearly described the problem and its impact and scope within the organizational setting. Ensure that you have adequately described the root causes w hen describing the symptoms of the problem.
• Recommendations lack specificity . Identify any use of vague statements and indeterminate terminology, such as, “A particular experience” or “a large increase to the budget.” These statements cannot be measured and, as a result, there is no way to evaluate their successful implementation. Provide specific data and use direct language in describing recommended actions.
• Unrealistic, exaggerated, or unattainable recommendations . Review your recommendations to ensure that they are based on the situational facts of the case. Your recommended solutions and courses of action must be based on realistic assumptions and fit within the constraints of the situation. Also note that the case scenario has already happened, therefore, any speculation or arguments about what could have occurred if the circumstances were different should be revised or eliminated.

Bee, Lian Song et al. "Business Students' Perspectives on Case Method Coaching for Problem-Based Learning: Impacts on Student Engagement and Learning Performance in Higher Education." Education & Training 64 (2022): 416-432; The Case Analysis . Fred Meijer Center for Writing and Michigan Authors. Grand Valley State University; Georgallis, Panikos and Kayleigh Bruijn. "Sustainability Teaching using Case-Based Debates." Journal of International Education in Business 15 (2022): 147-163; Hawes, Jon M. "Teaching is Not Telling: The Case Method as a Form of Interactive Learning." Journal for Advancement of Marketing Education 5 (Winter 2004): 47-54; Georgallis, Panikos, and Kayleigh Bruijn. "Sustainability Teaching Using Case-based Debates." Journal of International Education in Business 15 (2022): 147-163; .Dean,  Kathy Lund and Charles J. Fornaciari. "How to Create and Use Experiential Case-Based Exercises in a Management Classroom." Journal of Management Education 26 (October 2002): 586-603; Klebba, Joanne M. and Janet G. Hamilton. "Structured Case Analysis: Developing Critical Thinking Skills in a Marketing Case Course." Journal of Marketing Education 29 (August 2007): 132-137, 139; Klein, Norman. "The Case Discussion Method Revisited: Some Questions about Student Skills." Exchange: The Organizational Behavior Teaching Journal 6 (November 1981): 30-32; Mukherjee, Arup. "Effective Use of In-Class Mini Case Analysis for Discovery Learning in an Undergraduate MIS Course." The Journal of Computer Information Systems 40 (Spring 2000): 15-23; Pessoa, Silviaet al. "Scaffolding the Case Analysis in an Organizational Behavior Course: Making Analytical Language Explicit." Journal of Management Education 46 (2022): 226-251: Ramsey, V. J. and L. D. Dodge. "Case Analysis: A Structured Approach." Exchange: The Organizational Behavior Teaching Journal 6 (November 1981): 27-29; Schweitzer, Karen. "How to Write and Format a Business Case Study." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/how-to-write-and-format-a-business-case-study-466324 (accessed December 5, 2022); Reddy, C. D. "Teaching Research Methodology: Everything's a Case." Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods 18 (December 2020): 178-188; Volpe, Guglielmo. "Case Teaching in Economics: History, Practice and Evidence." Cogent Economics and Finance 3 (December 2015). doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/23322039.2015.1120977.

Writing Tip

Ca se Study and Case Analysis Are Not the Same!

Confusion often exists between what it means to write a paper that uses a case study research design and writing a paper that analyzes a case; they are two different types of approaches to learning in the social and behavioral sciences. Professors as well as educational researchers contribute to this confusion because they often use the term "case study" when describing the subject of analysis for a case analysis paper. But you are not studying a case for the purpose of generating a comprehensive, multi-faceted understanding of a research problem. R ather, you are critically analyzing a specific scenario to argue logically for recommended solutions and courses of action that lead to optimal outcomes applicable to professional practice.

To avoid any confusion, here are twelve characteristics that delineate the differences between writing a paper using the case study research method and writing a case analysis paper:

• Case study is a method of in-depth research and rigorous inquiry ; case analysis is a reliable method of teaching and learning . A case study is a modality of research that investigates a phenomenon for the purpose of creating new knowledge, solving a problem, or testing a hypothesis using empirical evidence derived from the case being studied. Often, the results are used to generalize about a larger population or within a wider context. The writing adheres to the traditional standards of a scholarly research study. A case analysis is a pedagogical tool used to teach students how to reflect and think critically about a practical, real-life problem in an organizational setting.
• The researcher is responsible for identifying the case to study; a case analysis is assigned by your professor . As the researcher, you choose the case study to investigate in support of obtaining new knowledge and understanding about the research problem. The case in a case analysis assignment is almost always provided, and sometimes written, by your professor and either given to every student in class to analyze individually or to a small group of students, or students select a case to analyze from a predetermined list.
• A case study is indeterminate and boundless; a case analysis is predetermined and confined . A case study can be almost anything [see item 9 below] as long as it relates directly to examining the research problem. This relationship is the only limit to what a researcher can choose as the subject of their case study. The content of a case analysis is determined by your professor and its parameters are well-defined and limited to elucidating insights of practical value applied to practice.
• Case study is fact-based and describes actual events or situations; case analysis can be entirely fictional or adapted from an actual situation . The entire content of a case study must be grounded in reality to be a valid subject of investigation in an empirical research study. A case analysis only needs to set the stage for critically examining a situation in practice and, therefore, can be entirely fictional or adapted, all or in-part, from an actual situation.
• Research using a case study method must adhere to principles of intellectual honesty and academic integrity; a case analysis scenario can include misleading or false information . A case study paper must report research objectively and factually to ensure that any findings are understood to be logically correct and trustworthy. A case analysis scenario may include misleading or false information intended to deliberately distract from the central issues of the case. The purpose is to teach students how to sort through conflicting or useless information in order to come up with the preferred solution. Any use of misleading or false information in academic research is considered unethical.
• Case study is linked to a research problem; case analysis is linked to a practical situation or scenario . In the social sciences, the subject of an investigation is most often framed as a problem that must be researched in order to generate new knowledge leading to a solution. Case analysis narratives are grounded in real life scenarios for the purpose of examining the realities of decision-making behavior and processes within organizational settings. A case analysis assignments include a problem or set of problems to be analyzed. However, the goal is centered around the act of identifying and evaluating courses of action leading to best possible outcomes.
• The purpose of a case study is to create new knowledge through research; the purpose of a case analysis is to teach new understanding . Case studies are a choice of methodological design intended to create new knowledge about resolving a research problem. A case analysis is a mode of teaching and learning intended to create new understanding and an awareness of uncertainty applied to practice through acts of critical thinking and reflection.
• A case study seeks to identify the best possible solution to a research problem; case analysis can have an indeterminate set of solutions or outcomes . Your role in studying a case is to discover the most logical, evidence-based ways to address a research problem. A case analysis assignment rarely has a single correct answer because one of the goals is to force students to confront the real life dynamics of uncertainly, ambiguity, and missing or conflicting information within professional practice. Under these conditions, a perfect outcome or solution almost never exists.
• Case study is unbounded and relies on gathering external information; case analysis is a self-contained subject of analysis . The scope of a case study chosen as a method of research is bounded. However, the researcher is free to gather whatever information and data is necessary to investigate its relevance to understanding the research problem. For a case analysis assignment, your professor will often ask you to examine solutions or recommended courses of action based solely on facts and information from the case.
• Case study can be a person, place, object, issue, event, condition, or phenomenon; a case analysis is a carefully constructed synopsis of events, situations, and behaviors . The research problem dictates the type of case being studied and, therefore, the design can encompass almost anything tangible as long as it fulfills the objective of generating new knowledge and understanding. A case analysis is in the form of a narrative containing descriptions of facts, situations, processes, rules, and behaviors within a particular setting and under a specific set of circumstances.
• Case study can represent an open-ended subject of inquiry; a case analysis is a narrative about something that has happened in the past . A case study is not restricted by time and can encompass an event or issue with no temporal limit or end. For example, the current war in Ukraine can be used as a case study of how medical personnel help civilians during a large military conflict, even though circumstances around this event are still evolving. A case analysis can be used to elicit critical thinking about current or future situations in practice, but the case itself is a narrative about something finite and that has taken place in the past.
• Multiple case studies can be used in a research study; case analysis involves examining a single scenario . Case study research can use two or more cases to examine a problem, often for the purpose of conducting a comparative investigation intended to discover hidden relationships, document emerging trends, or determine variations among different examples. A case analysis assignment typically describes a stand-alone, self-contained situation and any comparisons among cases are conducted during in-class discussions and/or student presentations.

The Case Analysis . Fred Meijer Center for Writing and Michigan Authors. Grand Valley State University; Mills, Albert J. , Gabrielle Durepos, and Eiden Wiebe, editors. Encyclopedia of Case Study Research . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2010; Ramsey, V. J. and L. D. Dodge. "Case Analysis: A Structured Approach." Exchange: The Organizational Behavior Teaching Journal 6 (November 1981): 27-29; Yin, Robert K. Case Study Research and Applications: Design and Methods . 6th edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2017; Crowe, Sarah et al. “The Case Study Approach.” BMC Medical Research Methodology 11 (2011):  doi: 10.1186/1471-2288-11-100; Yin, Robert K. Case Study Research: Design and Methods . 4th edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing; 1994.

• << Previous: Reviewing Collected Works
• Next: Writing a Case Study >>
• Last Updated: Mar 6, 2024 1:00 PM
• URL: https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/assignments

Conference proceedings publications in bibliographic databases: a case study of countries in Southeast Asia

• Open access
• Published: 20 November 2020
• Volume 126 , pages 355–387, ( 2021 )

Cite this article

You have full access to this open access article

• Philip J. Purnell   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3146-2737 1 , 2  

8141 Accesses

12 Citations

25 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Leading citation databases have made concerted efforts to reflect academic conference contributions in the form of proceedings papers in their databases. We studied global trends and a regional case study to determine the relative representation of conference proceedings in the global scholarly literature using the Web of Science, Scopus, and Dimensions. We designed our case study of ten Southeast Asian countries to uncover conspicuous publishing patterns obscured by global average figures. As a result, we discovered that Indonesia alone has made a recent and remarkable shift towards conference proceedings publishing. This trend was not the result of expanding database coverage but may be linked to a rapid increase in conferences locally hosted in Indonesia. The conclusion suggests that conference proceedings are increasingly indexed by major databases, and that scholars might have found advantage in publishing conference papers that were quicker and easier to publish than journal articles or book chapters. Our study is relevant to policy makers in the area of research evaluation because it highlights potential changes in academic publishing behaviour by those being assessed.

Similar content being viewed by others

Systematic analysis of coverage and usage of conference proceedings in web of science.

Carolin Michels & Jun-Ying Fu

The Importance of Conference Proceedings in Research Evaluation: A Methodology for Assessing Conference Impact

How are exclusively data journals indexed in major scholarly databases? An examination of four databases

Chenyue Jiao, Kai Li & Zhichao Fang

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

Academic scholars all over the world face mounting pressure to publish their findings in sources that are indexed in global citation databases (Abramo and D’Angelo 2014 ). Those who evaluate individuals for recruitment, academic promotion, or research grant awards increasingly use some form of quantitative assessment of their publication output and citation impact when taking decisions. The methods used in such assessment are often the subject of extensive discussion (Hicks, Wouters, Waltman, de Rijcke and Rafols 2015 ) and frequently use established citation indexes such as Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus (Archambault, Campbell, Gingras and Lariviere 2009 ) and more recently, new databases such as Dimensions (Hook, Porter, and Herzog 2018 ). All these databases comprise research contributions published in a variety of academic sources, most importantly journals, books and conference proceedings.

The subject of this study is the body of literature resulting from scholarly conferences and which play an important and increasingly visible role in the scholarly literature alongside journal articles, book chapters and other forms of scientific communication. In recent years, conference proceedings have been integrated with citation indexes to enable academics to search, retrieve and cite them in the same way they cite journal articles. The contribution of conference papers to the major citation indexes has not yet been well documented and this is the first topic addressed in this study.

Global trends hide lots of interesting dynamics at the level of individual countries and as the second topic addressed by our paper, we include a case study comprising the ten countries of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The ASEAN countries provide a good case study for this topic because they hold a shared vision of identity along with similarities in geography and scientific goals.

Each country displayed a different pattern in conference proceedings output which were grouped into 4 clusters, and the discussion presents some possible reasons for the differences. Such reasons include database coverage, the influence of national policy on the behaviour of scholars, and the location of the conference.

In this article, we review the literature on the developing role of conference proceedings in scholarly communication, their incorporation into the major citation databases, and introduce the ASEAN region as an ideal case study. In the methods section, we describe the databases used, the Web of Science, Scopus, and Dimensions and how we accessed their data. The results and discussion is organised into an initial section in which we present the trends in conference proceedings paper publishing over the last 20 years in each of the databases and how their numbers and proportions of the databases compare with one another. We then present data for the ASEAN region and its ten countries and group them into 4 clusters based on their conference proceedings publishing patterns. The results for Indonesia were so striking that the final part of the study examines two possible explanations for the sharp increase in conference output. First, whether the growth was due to expansion in database coverage, and the second is whether the location of the conference was related to the number of resulting proceedings papers from the hosting country. The article concludes that conference proceedings have become increasingly visible in the major citation databases, that interesting country-level patterns can be revealed by analysis, and that there has been a steep growth in preferential conference paper publishing in Indonesia coinciding with an increase in locally hosted conferences.

Literature review

• Conference proceedings

An evolutionary model of scholarly communication was described several decades ago in which academic research is communicated first as personal correspondence and in subsequent incremental forms that include open letters, conference proceedings and finally the journal article (Garvey, Lin, Nelson and Tomita 1972a ). A detailed study on the publication behaviour of 12,000 scientists over a 5 year period demonstrated that the majority of conference material presented at national meetings in America was later published as a journal article (Garvey, Lin, Nelson and Tomita 1972b ) and this pattern became broadly accepted as common practice in the exchange of scientific information between researchers. Later evidence challenged this view with conference proceedings seen by some as an end product and being accepted as evidence of scholarly activity by university tenure and promotion committees (Drott 1995 ), rather than being merely a step on the way to a journal article.

The advent of the Internet spawned fundamental changes to communication of academic research findings with some results appearing on the web before they were published in journals or as conference proceedings (Goodrum, McCain, Lawrence and Giles 2001 ). Work comparing conference papers with journal articles showed that conference papers are generally shorter (Gonzalez-Albo and Bordons 2011 ), less cited (Drott 1995 ) than journal articles and their citation peak is shorter lived (Lisée, Larivière and Archambault 2008 ). In many fields assessment for promotion gives higher weighting to journal articles, which serves as an incentive for scholars to adapt conference proceedings for subsequent journal submission. However, in other fields proceedings papers and journal articles are seen as different expressions of the same work (Bar-Ilan 2010 ) revealing a variance in publication behaviour between fields.

There is broad variance in the relative importance of proceedings papers depending on the field of study. One study showed that roughly half the papers in ISI Proceedings—the first conference proceedings database and later known as the Conference Proceedings Citation Index (CPCI)—were assigned to the field of Engineering and that this share increased from 43 per cent in 1994 to 61 per cent by 2002 (Glänzel, Schlemmer, Schubert and Thijs 2006 ), more than 6 times the corresponding share found in the Web of Science (WoS) journals. In the same study, the proportion of proceedings papers classified in the field of physics grew from 25 per cent to 32 per cent over the 8 year period while the corresponding proportion of journal articles in the WoS remained stable at around 13 per cent. Similarly, the engineering field was singled out as one in which proceedings papers receive a higher proportion of citations indicating that conference material is of greater import than in other fields (Lisée, Larivière and Archambault 2008 ). This was especially the case for computer science papers.

Computer science has also been identified as a field in which conference proceedings are a major venue (Bar-Ilan 2010 ) for disseminating research findings. Bar-Ilan ( 2010 ) pointed out that conference papers from Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) were already indexed in the Science Citation Index before the addition of the CPCI to the WoS in 2008. In a study comprising interviews with authors and journal editors in the software engineering field, conference papers were thought to be shorter than journal articles and contain only the exciting part of the study intended to keep a specialized audience abreast of novelties in their field (Montesi and Owen 2008 ). Journal articles were found to be a more mature product designed to enable readers to replicate results and form part of an archive. Furthermore, conference papers were often reworked and later published as journal articles. An extensive study of citations to non-WoS literature in 3 social science fields showed that only 2% of cited references to academic literature outside the WoS were to conference papers in psychology, only 1% in political science and even less in economics (Nederhof, van Leeuwen and van Raan 2010 ) showing very limited influence of non-WoS literature on highly cited works.

The WoS originally comprised 3 journal indices; the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) each consisting of metadata from academic peer reviewed journals. Where conference proceedings were published in journals in these indexes the papers were labelled as both ‘article’ and ‘proceedings paper’. A Dutch study concluded in 2007 that it was feasible to expand the WoS to include additional conference papers to provide better coverage in the field of computer science provided some technical issues were addressed such as the treatment of different versions of the same study (Moed and Visser 2007 ). In 2008, Thomson Reuters merged the content from its ISI Proceedings Science and Technology database into the WoS and renamed it the conference proceedings citation index (CPCI). Although a limited number of conference proceedings were already published in journals indexed in the database, it was the incorporation of the CPCI that contributed the majority of the conference literature to the WoS. It was this addition of conference proceedings into the Web of Science in 2008 that provided an opportunity to study these papers as a unique source of scholarly material.

At about the same time, journal articles that had been adapted from meeting presentations had their document types changed from ‘paper’ to ‘proceedings paper’, the same name given to the majority of the publications in the CPCI. All documents indexed from conference material were thus assigned the document type ‘proceedings paper’ although they may have originated either as journal articles that made explicit reference to initially having been presented at a scientific meeting or may instead have been published in a ‘book’ of proceedings. Proceedings papers published in journals have been found to vary in their proportion with respect to regular articles by field with highest proportions found in computer science/information technology and applied physics (Zhang and Glanzel 2012 ). Conference proceedings in journals can be further categorized into those accepted in ordinary issues and those published as special editions or monographs. Those published in monographs have been found in library and information science to be shorter, have fewer references, pass more quickly through peer review and receive fewer citations (González-Albo and Bordons 2011 ).

These nuances in publication behaviour, changes in documentation types and evolution of the WoS coverage over time mean that any study of publications is susceptible to an element of misinterpretation of the results owing to the idiosyncrasies of the database. For this reason, 3 databases were used; WoS, Elsevier’s Scopus that was released in 2004 as a more inclusive citation index, and Dimensions launched in 2018 by Digital Science. The changes in proportions of conference proceedings by different countries over time might be partially explained by the natural expansion of any single database over time. By using three databases, we are likely to illuminate the effects of any major changes in conference proceedings coverage by any one database.

Elsevier launched its proprietary citation index, Scopus, in 2004 which now covers more journals than Web of Science (Mongeon and Paul-Hus 2016 ). However, the overlapping coverage of conference proceedings between WoS and Scopus is limited. Indeed, WoS appears to cover many conference proceedings that are not indexed in Scopus, and Scopus covers many proceedings not covered by WoS (Visser, Van Eck and Waltman 2019 ).

Dimensions, a relative newcomer to citation indexing, was launched in early 2018 and offers a free version including access to just over 100 million scholarly records. Users can identify around 6 million conference proceedings among the records without requiring an organizational subscription. Dimensions relies heavily on Crossref as the backbone of its data (Hook et al. 2018 ). Dimensions coverage is also comparable with Scopus, indeed at least 90% of Scopus indexed papers were found in Dimensions with the exception of the most recent year in which coverage dropped to about two-thirds (Thelwall 2018 ) probably due to a longer time lag in indexing in Dimensions. Many Scopus indexed conference proceedings are however absent in Dimensions (Visser et al. 2019 ).

The different databases do not always coincide on their coverage and definition of document types, for instance Anne-Wil Harzing found that Dimensions indexed more of her conference papers than Scopus while the WoS indexed none of them (Harzing 2019 ). The document type definitions are not always uniform as Dimensions classifies all items indexed from journals as articles while the WoS and Scopus separates conference proceedings, editorial material, book reviews, letters, corrections, and others as specific document types. For instance, we observed in this study that Dimensions classified more than 100,000 Journal of Physics Conference Series papers as journal articles, which the WoS and Scopus consider conference proceedings. These practices all swell the number of journal articles in Dimensions which in turn makes the proceedings content seem a smaller proportion.

This indicates the coverage practices of the WoS, Scopus and Dimensions are independent of each other, and that multiple databases should be used whenever possible to build a picture of the real situation without relying too heavily on any single database.

ASEAN region

Publishing behaviour is subject to universal forces such as the requirement for academics to publish their work and demonstrate some form of impact. Regional differences in publication behaviour can provide an interesting basis for more specific study, for example the fast-growing emerging regions such as those of South East Asia where 10 countries, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, have formed the ASEAN group of nations. The organization was founded in 1967 (ASEAN 2019 ) in order to promote peace, collaboration, regional research, and common social, cultural and economic values.

The ASEAN countries provide an ideal case study because they share a common geographical region region, and have shared scientific goals. They have all rapidly increased their scientific output in recent years and it is interesting therefore to observe whether publication patterns emerge at individual country level that are obscured by global trends. Othere studies have used the ASEAN countries for similar reasons.

In 2011, Nguyen and Pham studied the scientific output and impact of the ASEAN countries and described 4 distinct groups with Singapore alone in the most advanced bloc, Malaysia and Thailand in the second, Indonesia, The Philippines and Vietnam in the third, and finally Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar making up the fourth cluster (Nguyen and Pham 2011 ). These researchers also found correlations between scientific output and both the Knowledge Index and the Knowledge Economy Index published by the World Bank in 2008 (Chen and Dahlman 2005 ) each of which confirmed the four distinct groups of ASEAN countries observed by Nguyen and Pham. The rate of economic growth of countries such as Singapore has been linked to the investment in research and development (R&D) (Nguyen and Pham 2011 ). A large 40-country study of investment and publication data demonstrated a positive correlation between R&D spending and research publication output (Meo, Al Masri, Usmani, Memon and Zaidi 2013 ).

As part of a UNESCO report, Moed and Galevi described a bibliometric model to group 25 Asian countries’ relative stage of development by organizing them into 3 clusters based on the proportion of their internationally co-authored papers and the geographical location of the collaborating countries (Moed and Halevi 2014 ). The first group includes only Singapore among the ASEAN countries and whose papers were often co-authored with researchers in China, Hong Kong and Macau. The second cluster also only features one ASEAN country, Malaysia, which is more linked to research groups in India, Pakistan and Iran, while the third group contains the remaining members in a South East Asian cluster. These authors also draw a link between the state of a country’s development and the ratio of the number of its doctoral students to the number of its publications. For example, Japan, a developed country has roughly the same number of doctoral students as Indonesia but produces 100 times the number of publications as Indonesia (Moed and Halevi 2014 ). This paper built on the idea of organising the countries into clusters based on their conference proceedings publishing behaviour.

Methods and data sources

The method followed for analysing conference proceedings followed the same pattern for each database. First, publications were extracted from the databases and organised by document type and country. Proceedings papers were compared with all document types to determine the proportion of conference papers published by authors in each country. The second step was to analyse the patterns from each of the ten ASEAN countries and group them into 4 broad clusters based on distinctive publishing behaviour. Finally, the findings were validated through personal knowledge of database indexing, and interviews with a conference organiser in Indonesia, and an international publisher of conference proceedings.

Data for the bibliometric studies was extracted from in-house versions of the WoS, Scopus and Dimensions databases hosted by CWTS at Leiden University. The CWTS version of WoS comprises 5 citation indices; the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI), Conference Proceedings Citation Index—Science (CPCI-S) and the Conference Proceedings Citation Index—Social Sciences & Humanities (CPCI-SSH) and is collectively referred to as WoS 5-ed meaning five editions. Neither the Book Citation Index (BkCI) nor the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) were included in the study because they are not hosted in the system. The extraction includes records up to the end of 2019, which allows fairly reliable study of all years up to and including 2018. The data for 2019 was not complete and therefore results for that year are not presented in the study. The in-house version of the WoS database hosted by CWTS is extracted multiple times every year from the database provider and subject to an extra round of cleaning, address unification and data validation. Scopus data were extracted in May 2019 and Dimensions data in June 2019 with the expectation that data for all years up to 2018 would be reliable enough to use in the study.

These stable and accurate versions of the databases are therefore more suitable for bibliometric study than the online versions that are designed for immediate reflection of the most recently indexed papers. Therefore, the interface versions of these databases will necessarily show slightly different results than those presented in this study.

The papers used in this study were those with document types ‘proceedings paper’ and ‘proceeding’ from Scopus and Dimensions respectively, and all papers in the CPCI for WoS. In each case, the proportion of conference papers was defined as the number of conference papers divided by the total output. The total output means the entire database for Scopus and Dimensions, while for WoS it means the three journal indexes plus the 2 conference proceedings indexes, known as WoS-5ed.

To determine Indonesia’s rank in conference output, we used author affiliations on the proceedings papers and noted Indonesia’s position. We browsed the conference series publisher websites to determine the location of the conferences and listed the proportion of conferences that were hosted in Indonesia. For this section we used only the WoS and Scopus but not Dimensions because the conference series could not be reliably identified from the in-house version of the database.

Results and discussion

Conference proceedings in citation indexes.

As the databases have grown, the number of conference proceedings records has generally increased over time (Fig.  1 ). Looking back 20 years we can see that WoS usually indexed between 20–40% more conference papers each year than Scopus, although the WoS surge in 2003 increased the gap to 67% and the Scopus surge in 2005 closed the gap again to 23%. In the subsequent 3 years, 2010–12 the number of conference papers in the WoS dipped and was overtaken by Scopus which continued its rise to a peak in 2011. The conference paper indexing in WoS then increased again whilst Scopus fell back and the difference between the 2 databases in 2015–17 stabilised at about 40%. The 2018 figures showed a drop in WoS conference papers, although these might still change as records are belatedly indexed. The conference papers indexed in Dimensions appeared to be independent of WoS and Scopus growing at a slower rate and usually totalled between 50–62% of the Scopus papers until 2015. In the 4 years to 2017, Dimensions added conference papers at a rate of 9–11%, far higher than WoS and Scopus.

Conference papers in citation indexes

The number of conference proceedings records in the WoS was fairly even until 2001 in line with the rest of the WoS as demonstrated by the stable proportion of conference papers in the WoS (Fig.  2 ). Thereafter followed a steep increase of conference records, 77% growth between 2001 and 2003. This growth was faster than the rest of the WoS database and resulted in conference papers contributing an increasing proportional share of the database that rose from 16 to 25% in those 2 years. In the subsequent 14 years the number of conference records in WoS grew only 58% and its proportion of the database reduced and stabilized at around 21%.

Conference papers in WoS

Tracking the share of conference papers in WoS, Scopus and Dimensions showed that over the past 20 years, WoS has consistently indexed a higher proportion of conference papers than the other 2 databases. The only exceptions were in the year 2005 when a peak of Scopus-indexed conference papers came close to the WoS share, and in the years 2010–11 when the proportion of conference papers in Scopus briefly surpassed that in the WoS. The share of conference papers in WoS reached its lowest point since 2002 in 2011 which coincided with the highest peak in Scopus. Dimensions consistently contained a lower share of conference papers than both the established databases.

Regional trends in the ASEAN countries

The second part of the study focussed on the specific trends observed in the 10 countries of the ASEAN region. As global figures are the average of all the world’s regions, it might be possible to uncover more interesting patterns by looking at individual countries. The ASEAN countries have the stated aim of working together on scientific research and provided an appropriate set of countries for study.

Results are first presented for the region as a whole and subsequently for the individual countries. We looked within the country-level findings to try to cluster countries together that exhibited similar conference proceedings publishing patterns. For instance, countries which showed increased conference output to a greater extent than the regional trend could be clustered together, while those countries whose conference publishing declined would be another cluster. A third cluster was for countries which followed the regional trend, and yet a fourth was for countries whose output was too low to assign to any other cluster with confidence.

The conference proceedings output from the ASEAN region started in the WoS and Scopus fairly late and from a very low base and therefore this paper focusses on those published in the last 10 full years plus 2018. Data for 2018 were included as almost complete but not completely reliable at the time of analysis. Therefore, the 2018 figures are included to provide insight into the latest trends but we also go back 10 full years prior to 2018 to ensure we covered a full decade of complete data.

A comparison of ASEAN conference proceedings between WoS, Scopus and Dimensions (Fig.  3 ) demonstrated some similarity with the global pattern, specifically the higher proportions of conference papers in the WoS and the lowest share in Dimensions. The share of conference papers in Scopus exceeded that of WoS only in 2010–11 and this was by a greater margin than we saw in the global graph. Individually, each of the ten countries in the ASEAN region demonstrated a different pattern and we attempted to group these patterns into four clusters as described above.

Conference proceedings publishing trends—ASEAN

ASEAN country clusters

The number of conference papers published by authors in the ASEAN region and their proportion of overall publications has been diverse, with each country at first glance seeming to display its own unique pattern of growth (Figs. 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ). Upon closer inspection, it was possible to group the 10 patterns into 4 clusters.

Conference proceedings publishing trends—Brunei

Conference proceedings publishing trends—Cambodia

Conference proceedings publishing trends—Indonesia

Conference proceedings publishing trends—Laos

Conference proceedings publishing trends—Malaysia

Conference proceedings publishing trends—Myanmar

Conference proceedings publishing trends—Philippines

Conference proceedings publishing trends—Singapore

Conference proceedings publishing trends—Thailand

Conference proceedings publishing trends—Vietnam

The first cluster included Indonesia and the Philippines because their patterns (Figs. 6 and 10 ) were both characterised by steep growth in the share of conference proceedings papers relative to other document types. The proportion of conference papers published by authors in the Philippines (Fig.  6 ) has approximately doubled since 2012 in each of the 3 data sources. The publishing output from the Philippines has increased in that time across all document types, however the conference output has increased more quickly. The case of Indonesia is even more remarkable (Fig.  10 ) since the share of conference papers has reached 80% in the WoS and 58% in Scopus. Contrary to expectations, the growth was not reflected at all in the Dimensions data which showed output of conference papers and journal articles growing at almost exactly the same rate and more recently the conference proceedings and book chapters losing some share to journal articles. In the WoS and Scopus databases, the expansion in the share of conference papers was clearly at the expense of journal articles, and in Scopus also of book chapters.

The second group included only Singapore, whose share of conference papers among its output has consistently fallen (Fig.  11 ) in all 3 data sources over the past 10 years. The conference paper output was fairly flat for Scopus and Dimensions for the entire period, whilst there was a sustained period of growth in the WoS for a 5 year period from 2011 to 2016 before the output fell back again. Therefore, as the output of other document types has grown, the share of conference papers has steadily declined in each database studied. In the Scopus database, the decline in conference paper share was taken up mainly by journal articles as book chapters also saw a decline. Meanwhile in Dimensions, the book chapters dropped less, and the journal articles took up the share. These figures did not demonstrate any major shift in publishing behaviour and were most likely due to an acceleration of journal article publishing with which conference output simply did not keep pace.

The third group comprised three countries; Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, each of which generally followed the patterns seen at global level. This pattern was characterised by steady growth in the conference paper output that was in line with growth in publications of all document types and which therefore resulted in a relatively flat conference papers share graph. Malaysia did not fit the pattern perfectly because the conference share declined slightly in WoS and Scopus (Fig.  8 ) and significantly in Dimensions. The proportion of Malaysian conference papers was similar in all 3 databases at the beginning of the study period and diverged with a higher proportion of conference papers in WoS and a lower share in Dimensions. For Thailand and Vietnam (Figs. 12 and 13 ), the share of conference papers in Scopus tracked that of WoS and challenged WoS to varying degrees during two periods, the year 2005 and the years 2010–12, the period when there was a general reduction in conference proceedings indexing in WoS. The loss of conference paper share was taken up in each database mainly by journal articles.

The fourth group comprised countries with very low output of academic papers and more or less stable proportions of conference papers. The group included Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar (Figs. 4 , 5 , 7 , 9 ). Although some differences could be observed for instance the trough in Myanmar’s output between 2012–15, the low number of papers would be expected to exaggerate the significance of such observations.

The case of Indonesia

The most striking result was seen in the WoS data for Indonesia that showed a sharp inflection in the proportion of conference papers in national output starting after 2011. In the following 7 years, the share of conference papers rose from 23 to 80% of total annual output (Fig.  10 ). Indonesia’s authors also increased their publication of other document types in the WoS, for instance journal article output has increased by 16.1% per year since 2008. However, this was far exceeded by the rate of conference papers that grew at 47.1% per year since 2008. The trend was less extreme but still marked in the Scopus database. Conference paper output from Indonesia increased more than six-fold in Scopus between 2008 and 2015 but remained within a range of 23%–33% of Indonesia’s output in the overall database. In the following 3 years, the number of Scopus-indexed conference papers from Indonesia multiplied by more than 8 times, increasing faster than the journal article rate. By 2018 Indonesia’s conference papers accounted for almost three-fifths (58%) of the country’s Scopus output. The trend in the Dimensions database did not appear to follow that of the WoS and Scopus. The number of conference proceedings written by Indonesian authors fluctuated in Dimensions until 2013 and accounted for between 7 and 16% of national output. By the year 2017, the share had jumped to 18.6% accompanying a nearly four-fold increase in conference publications compared with 2015. However, the proportion fell back again in 2018, although this might have been affected by the rate at which conference papers were indexed in the database. The most recent years are less reliable, and the relative proportions might stabilise as 2018 data becomes more complete.

Conference coverage expansion or organic growth?

It is worth considering that Indonesia’s increased conference representation in the WoS and Scopus might be due simply to the fact that these databases have added a number of conference series that contained large numbers of Indonesian papers prior to incorporation. In order to test this explanation, we looked at the 6 conference series with most Indonesian papers in the WoS and the corresponding 6 in Scopus in the last 5 years which was the period during which the major growth occurred. The aim was to determine whether these series were recently added to the databases and if they contained large numbers of Indonesian papers prior to their indexation.

The top 6 conference series in terms of Indonesia authored papers are shown for the WoS (Table 1 ) and then for Scopus (Table 2 ). Four of the top conference series were the same in WoS and Scopus while each database included 2 unique series in their version of Indonesia’s top 6. It was not possible to identify the specific conference series for Indonesian authors in the Dimensions database and therefore this section of the study used only the WoS and Scopus. Also shown is the percentage of that year’s conference within the series that were physically hosted in a location in Indonesia.

The results from the WoS showed that in each of these series the number of Indonesian papers grew quickly in the 5 years from 2014 to 2018 (Table 1 ), more than seven-fold in the long-established AIP Conference series and more than 470-fold in the IOP Conference Series: Earth & Environmental Science (Fig.  14 ). In most of the other series, there only a handful of Indonesian papers in 2014 but thousands in 2018. In the Advances in social science education and humanities research there were no Indonesian papers at all in 2014 and 2,441 in 2018. One could argue that many of these series were relatively new and have themselves grown from a very low base over the same time period of this study. That growth could be an explanation for the rapid growth in papers in these series from any country, not just Indonesia. However, the Indonesian contribution has grown a lot faster than the total as attested to by the increased proportion of papers from that country. In 2014 the proportion of published papers in these series from Indonesia ranged from 0 to 5% while by 2018 the range was 15.3% to 52.5%. Only 2 of the 6 conference series studied were added to the WoS since 2014. In one of these ( Advances in Social Sciences, Education & Humanities Research ), Indonesian papers were not present in the first year. In the other case ( AEBMR-Advances in Economics, Business & Management Research ), Indonesian scientists authored fewer than 10% of the resulting proceedings papers in its first year.

Indonesian proceedings in conference series—WoS

The least remarkable growth was seen in the AIP Conference Proceedings in which Indonesia ranked 8th by number of conference papers in 2014 and rose to 2nd by 2018. In the other 5 series Indonesia published more conference papers than any other country in the world in 2018. This is a notable achievement when just 5 years earlier, the country ranked between 17th and 41st in the world and did not publish any papers at all in one of the series.

In Scopus the figures are no less impressive. In the 6 conference series in Scopus with most Indonesian papers, we see the same remarkable growth (Table 2 ). Four of those conference series were the same in WoS and Scopus although the number of papers indexed varies between databases. Two of the series shown in the WoS table are not indexed in Scopus while 2 that are in the Scopus table are not indexed in the WoS. In both the MATEC and the Es3 Web of Conference series, there were no Indonesian authored papers in 2014 but more than a thousand in 2018 (Fig.  15 ). In the Es3 Web of Conference that accounted for more than a quarter (28.6%) of the world share of papers which was more than any other country in the world. In the MATEC Web of Conferences the Indonesian authored papers placed Indonesia as the third ranked country by output by 2018.

Indonesian proceedings in conference series—Scopus

Conference hosting

The data presented in Tables 1 and 2 show Indonesia’s rank in the countries with most author affiliations on the proceedings papers in 6 conferences series by year. This means the publication year, and not necessarily the year the conference took place. The 2 columns furthest to the right show the proportion of conferences in the series that were hosted in Indonesia. The year the conference was hosted did not always coincide with the year in which the proceedings were published. Sometimes a conference is held at the end of 1 year, say in December and even a quick publisher will publish the conference proceedings in the following year. That means the publication numbers and conference hosting dates in Tables 1 and 2 are not infallibly related although we have made the assumption that in the majority of cases the relationship holds true. Even so, the data clearly shows an increase in the proportion of conference papers published by Indonesia based authors and an increase in the proportion of conferences hosted in Indonesia.

Conference proceedings indexing

The steep increase in conference papers coincided with the launch of a CD Rom version of ‘ISI Proceedings’ in the early 2000s. The database owner, then Thomson Reuters, sought to create more value in this product by adding proceedings papers from conferences held in the preceding 5 years Footnote 1 in addition to those that were indexed annually. The additional conferences swelled the number of proceedings papers that resulted in a peak of 25% in the proportion of conference papers in the WoS in 2003. Growth tempered after 2009 as emphasis (and resources) shifted towards the indexing of books and book chapters in preparation for the launch of the Book Citation index in 2011. Once the Book Citation Index was launched, evaluation and indexing work resumed its usual pace on proceedings. In the most recent five years, the conference papers have reached a stable ratio of around 1:4 compared with journal papers as both grew at a similar rate.

In the Scopus database, the share of conference papers showed a similar pattern to that seen in the WoS (Fig.  2 ) albeit less extreme and shifted approximately four years later. The relative delay of the phenomenon is possibly due to the later addition of conference papers to Scopus as part of the Scopus Conference Expansion Programme (Elsevier 2015 ) in which over 400,000 conference papers were added to the database during the years 2011–2014. This was several years after the CPCI was added to the WoS and would explain the time difference between the 2 databases in the surge of conference papers.

The reason for the lower proportion of conference papers in Dimensions is likely due to greater coverage of journal articles globally combined with a smaller coverage of conference proceedings papers. It may also be due to the differences in document type classification, namely that all journal material is classified as article in Dimensions while articles in the other 2 databases are sub-sets of journal material which also contains other document types including conference proceedings. Journal publishers are possibly more diligent than conference organisers in generating and depositing DOIs in the Crossref database which is the backbone of the Dimensions database. That would partially explain more journal content being indexed in Dimensions than conference proceedings publications. The owners of WoS and Scopus, however, have each made concerted campaigns to boost the representation of conference material which were followed by sustained increased share thereafter.

The clustering exercise revealed sub-regional trends with the ASEAN countries. By far the most interesting country for further study was Indonesia. Its steep and sustained increase in conference publishing (Fig.  10 ) deviated so much from the global pattern that we investigated 2 potential explanations. The first was whether non-indexed conference series containing large numbers of Indonesian conference papers had suddenly been indexed by the databases used in the study. The author considers this unlikely, because the indexing policies did not change significantly during this period and because the analysis showed the conferences with the largest increase of papers from Indonesia were already indexed. The second was whether hosting conferences in Indonesia had a positive impact on output. The only 2 other countries to depart from the global norm were the Philippines whose share of conference papers also increased, and Singapore whose share declined. In both of these cases, the results were notable but did not show enough difference from the global picture to warrant further investigation. Slight differences from the global average by any individual country are to be expected, and those observed from the Philippines and Singapore were most likely examples of this deviance rather than any major shift in publishing behaviour.

The differences shown in Indonesia’s conference publishing pattern between the 3 databases might be explained by the unique coverage policy of each database and the precise timing of when large conference series were added to the databases. However, there is a clear preferential increase in Indonesian conference paper output in WoS and Scopus that implicates changing publishing behaviour in Indonesia. This suggests that the most likely explanation for the observed increase in conference paper output from Indonesia can be found within the Indonesian academic community.

Increased visibility of conference papers in global databases means research managers and administrators are now able to evaluate conference proceedings papers among other indicators of an individual’s productivity. This raises the possibility that academics have chosen to preferentially publish conference proceedings rather than journal articles or book chapters. If one simply counts all output found in a citation index linked to an academic, then one will be rewarding all indexed document types equally. This might become an incentivising factor in publishing one type of paper over another in countries where academic promotion policy does not distinguish between document types. Indeed, conversations with Indonesian academics and one Indonesian conference organiser supported this hypothesis. The organiser sent ministry guidelines for academic recruitment and promotion issued in 2012, 2014, and 2017. To his knowledge, there were “no rules regarding publications in the 2000s. This policy of spurring the number of publications in Indonesia was only implemented 3–5 years ago.” He went on to say Indonesians were incentivised by Scopus publications which were more easily and quickly attained through conference proceeding and that “the goal was catching up with Malaysia and Singapore in Scopus output.”

An alternative possibility is that increased database coverage is responsible for greater visibility of Indonesian publication activity. Most of the conference series studied were already indexed in the citation databases before any significant contribution from Indonesia, thereby dismissing the sudden addition of specific conferences to the databases as a plausible explanation for the growth. The only exception was AEBMR—Advances in Economics, Business & Management Research which was added to the WoS in 2015. In that year, 44 Indonesian papers were added, and that figure rose by more than 14-fold to 621 in the following 4 years. The results showed that Indonesian authors have indeed greatly increased their conference proceedings publication output within the last 5 years and the presence of these papers in the databases was not explained by sudden indexing decisions. In personal communication, a leading conference publisher supported the hypothesis that some authors from Indonesia are choosing the conference route as quicker than the journal article alternative and found it easier to pass peer review on conference papers than journal articles.

In almost all the conference series studied, there was an increasing proportion of the conferences hosted in Indonesia. The growing interest of the Indonesian academic community in attending conferences and publishing conference papers may well have stimulated the increased number of conferences organised and hosted in Indonesia. The conference publisher mentioned earlier also suggested that investment by Indonesia in supporting science conferences has led to the increasing number of events physically hosted in Indonesia. The combination of government investment in science, ministry guidelines incentivising publishing, and academics’ preference for conference proceedings are the likely cause of the increased number of locally hosted conferences.

Conclusions

Both the WoS and Scopus have made concerted efforts at different times to add conference proceedings papers to their databases and these remain an important part of both databases. The addition of the Conference Proceedings Citation Index to the WoS caused a major jump in representation of conference material in the database. Similarly, the Scopus Expansion Project added a lot of conference proceedings to the Scopus database although this occurred several years later and consequently the conference proceedings remain more prominent in the WoS than Scopus. Dimensions indexes more journal articles and fewer conference proceedings papers than the WoS and Scopus and therefore appears to hold a lower proportion of conference proceedings. However, conference proceedings are often classified as journal articles in Dimensions which both raises the number of articles and reduces the number of proceedings papers. The backbone of the Dimensions content is Crossref and its content is therefore determined by those publishers that have deposited DOIs in the Crossref database. Journal publishers are likely to be more diligent about this process than conference organisers because DOIs are decisive when journals are evaluated for inclusion in many prestigious databases. These practices contribute to the apparently lower proportion of conference papers in Dimensions than the other two databases.

Studying the dynamics of conference proceedings publishing depends on multiple factors that affect different parts of the world to varying degrees, and these stories may be obscured when we look at the global average figures. Consequently, the second part of the paper was a case study of the ASEAN region as a well-defined group of 10 component countries to identify any interesting trends. Conference proceedings output started from a low base in the ASEAN countries and on average saw a recent increase in conference proceedings publishing in the WoS and Scopus while the proportion of journal articles and book chapters and other document types declined. The 10 countries were organised into 4 clusters with only Indonesia and the Philippines showing sustained increase in conference publishing, while Singapore declined. The other countries generally followed the global trend. Indonesia was by far the most interesting case due to the extent of the apparent wholesale shift of its country’s authors towards publishing conference proceedings at the expense of other document types. Publishing of journal articles also increased but were easily outpaced by the conference papers which accounted for the majority of change in the ASEAN region’s publishing pattern.

Further investigation into potential explanations for the disproportionate increase in conference proceedings publications from Indonesian academics examined the database coverage of Indonesian conference papers and the changing dynamics within the academic community. Expansion of conference proceedings coverage in both the WoS and Scopus has been shown to be partially responsible for the increased number of research papers from Russian scientists (Moed, Markusova and Akoev 2018 ). The findings showed the phenomenon reflected real growth in published conference papers by Indonesian authors rather than being the result of increased database coverage. They also determined that Indonesia has rapidly and recently increased its hosting of international conferences whose proceedings are indexed in the major citation indexes. The increase in conference hosting is a plausible explanation for the corresponding growth in Indonesian conference publications, as it must be easier to attend and present a paper at home than abroad where international travel might be a barrier. Further research would be required to determine whether the locally hosted conferences bred increased output, or if improved Indonesian research had attracted international conferences to the country.

The local publishing guidelines and sometimes controversial credit-based assessment system (Singh Chawla 2018 ) might have provided the conditions and stimulus for Indonesian academics to increase their publication output and advance their careers partially through a preference for publishing conference papers and those same policies could have also incentivized scientists to host international conferences in Indonesia. A recent study found an isolated case of preferential conference proceedings publishing in Europe and attributed that to the national policy for evaluating academics (Vanecek and Pecha 2020 ). Follow up studies are therefore encouraged to look at the Indonesian local higher education and research promotional policies, and surveys of Indonesian scientists would be especially warranted.

The author is a former employee of Thomson Reuters.

Abramo, G., & D’Angelo, C. A. (2014). How do you define and measure research productivity? Scientometrics, 101 (2), 1129–1144. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1269-8

Article   Google Scholar  

Archambault, E., Campbell, D., Gingras, Y., & Lariviere, V. (2009). Comparing of science bibliometric statistics obtained from the web and scopus. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60 (7), 1320–1326. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21062

ASEAN. (2019). Association of Southeast Asian Nations Website.

Bar-Ilan, J. (2010). Web of science with the conference proceedings citation indexes: The case of computer science. Scientometrics, 83 (3), 809–824. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0145-4

Chen, D., & Dahlman, C. (2005). The Knowledge Economy, the KAM Methodology and World Bank Operations . Retrieved from https://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/695211468153873436/The-knowledge-economy-the-KAM-methodology-and-World-Bank-operations

Drott, M. C. (1995). Reexamining the role of conference papers in scholarly communication. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 46 (4), 299–305. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199505)46:4%3c299::AID-ASI6%3e3.0.CO;2-0

Elsevier. (2015). Scopus conference expansion programme.

Garvey, W. D., Lin, N., Nelson, C. E., & Tomita, K. (1972a). Research studies in patterns of scientific communication: I. General description of research program. Information Storage and Retrieval, 8 (3), 111–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/0020-0271(72)90040-X

Garvey, W. D., Lin, N., Nelson, C. E., & Tomita, K. (1972b). Research studies in patterns of scientific communication: II. The role of the national meeting in scientific and technical communication. Information Storage and Retrieval, 8 (4), 159–169. https://doi.org/10.1016/0020-0271(72)90001-0

Glänzel, W., Schlemmer, B., Schubert, A., & Thijs, B. (2006). Proceedings literature as additional data source for bibliometric analysis. Scientometrics, 68 (3), 457–473. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0124-y

González-Albo, B., & Bordons, M. (2011). Articles vs. proceedings papers: Do they differ in research relevance and impact? A case study in the library and information science field. Journal of Informetrics, 5 (3), 369–381. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2011.01.011

Goodrum, A. A., McCain, K. W., Lawrence, S., & Giles, C. L. (2001). Scholarly publishing in the internet age: A citation analysis of computer science literature. Information Processing and Management, 37 (5), 661–675. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0306-4573(00)00047-9

Article   MATH   Google Scholar  

Harzing, A.-W. (2019). Two new kids on the block: How do crossref and dimensions compare with google scholar, microsoft academic, scopus and the web of science? Scientometrics, 120 (1), 341–349. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03114-y

Hicks, D., Wouters, P., Waltman, L., de Rijcke, S., & Rafols, I. (2015). The Leiden manifesto for research metrics. Nature, 520 (7548), 429–431. https://doi.org/10.1038/520429a

Hook, D. W., Porter, S. J., & Herzog, C. (2018). Dimensions: Building context for search and evaluation. Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics, 3, 23. https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2018.00023

Lisée, C., Larivière, V., & Archambault, É. (2008). Conference proceedings as a source of scientific information: A bibliometric analysis. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59 (11), 1779–1784. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20888

Meo, S. A., Al Masri, A. A., Usmani, A. M., Memon, A. N., & Zaidi, S. Z. (2013). Impact of GDP, spending on R&D, number of universities and scientific journals on research publications among asian countries. PLoS ONE, 8 (6), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0066449

Moed, H. F., & Halevi, G. (2014). Tracking scientific development and collaborations – The case of 25 Asian countries. In David W. Chapman and Chiao-Ling Chien (Ed.), Higher education in Asia: Expanding Out, Expanding Up (pp. 79–92). Retrieved from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000227516

Moed, H. F., Markusova, V., & Akoev, M. (2018). Trends in Russian research output indexed in scopus and web of science. Scientometrics, 116 (2), 1153–1180. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2769-8

Moed, H. F., & Visser, M. (2007). Developing bibliometric indicators of research performance in computer science: An exploratory study . Retrieved from https://www.cwts.nl/pdf/nwo_inf_final_report_v_210207.pdf

Mongeon, P., & Paul-Hus, A. (2016). The journal coverage of web of science and scopus: A comparative analysis. Scientometrics, 106 (1), 213–228. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1765-5

Montesi, M., & Owen, J. M. (2008). From conference to journal publication: How conference papers in software engineering are extended for publication in journals. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59 (5), 816–829. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20805

Nederhof, A. J., van Leeuwen, T. N., & van Raan, A. F. J. (2010). Highly cited non-journal publications in political science, economics and psychology: A first exploration. Scientometrics, 83 (2), 363–374. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0086-y

Nguyen, T. V., & Pham, L. T. (2011). Scientific output and its relationship to knowledge economy: An analysis of ASEAN countries. Scientometrics, 89 (1), 107–117. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0446-2

Article   MathSciNet   Google Scholar  

Singh Chawla, D. (2018, December 31). Indonesia’s scientists voice concerns about the country’s researcher ranking system. Chemical & Engineering News . Retrieved from https://cen.acs.org/policy/publishing/Indonesias-scientists-voice-concerns-countrys/96/web/2018/12

Thelwall, M. (2018). Dimensions: A competitor to scopus and the web of science? Journal of Informetrics, 12 (2), 430–435. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2018.03.006

Vanecek, J., & Pecha, O. (2020). Fast growth of the number of proceedings papers in atypical fields in the Czech Republic is a likely consequence of the national performance-based research funding system. Research Evaluation . https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvaa005

Visser, M., Van Eck, J., & Waltman, L. (2019). Large-scale comparison of bibliographic data sources: Web of science, scopus, dimensions, and crossref.  17th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics, ISSI 2019 - Proceedings , 2, 2358-2369.

Zhang, L., & Glanzel, W. (2012). Proceeding papers in journals versus the regular journal publications. Journal of Informetrics, 6 (1), 88–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2011.06.007

Download references

Acknowledgements

Ton van Raan and Ludo Waltman for inspiring me to embarque upon this journey and guiding me expertly through it. Roy Hendroko Setyobudi for advice on the Indonesian higher education system and conferencing. Kim Eggleton for advice on conference publishing trends.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University, P.O. Box 905, 2300 AX, Leiden, The Netherlands

Philip J. Purnell

United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, UAE

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Philip J. Purnell .

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest.

The author declares that they have no conflict of interest.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Purnell, P.J. Conference proceedings publications in bibliographic databases: a case study of countries in Southeast Asia. Scientometrics 126 , 355–387 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03773-2

Download citation

Received : 21 April 2020

Accepted : 22 October 2020

Published : 20 November 2020

Issue Date : January 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03773-2

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

• SpringerLink shop

Types of journal articles

It is helpful to familiarise yourself with the different types of articles published by journals. Although it may appear there are a large number of types of articles published due to the wide variety of names they are published under, most articles published are one of the following types; Original Research, Review Articles, Short reports or Letters, Case Studies, Methodologies.

Original Research:

This is the most common type of journal manuscript used to publish full reports of data from research. It may be called an  Original Article, Research Article, Research, or just  Article, depending on the journal. The Original Research format is suitable for many different fields and different types of studies. It includes full Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion sections.

Short reports or Letters:

These papers communicate brief reports of data from original research that editors believe will be interesting to many researchers, and that will likely stimulate further research in the field. As they are relatively short the format is useful for scientists with results that are time sensitive (for example, those in highly competitive or quickly-changing disciplines). This format often has strict length limits, so some experimental details may not be published until the authors write a full Original Research manuscript. These papers are also sometimes called Brief communications .

Review Articles:

Review Articles provide a comprehensive summary of research on a certain topic, and a perspective on the state of the field and where it is heading. They are often written by leaders in a particular discipline after invitation from the editors of a journal. Reviews are often widely read (for example, by researchers looking for a full introduction to a field) and highly cited. Reviews commonly cite approximately 100 primary research articles.

TIP: If you would like to write a Review but have not been invited by a journal, be sure to check the journal website as some journals to not consider unsolicited Reviews. If the website does not mention whether Reviews are commissioned it is wise to send a pre-submission enquiry letter to the journal editor to propose your Review manuscript before you spend time writing it.  

Case Studies:

These articles report specific instances of interesting phenomena. A goal of Case Studies is to make other researchers aware of the possibility that a specific phenomenon might occur. This type of study is often used in medicine to report the occurrence of previously unknown or emerging pathologies.

Methodologies or Methods

These articles present a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method. The article should describe a demonstrable advance on what is currently available.

Back │ Next

What Can Transformers Learn In-Context? A Case Study of Simple Function Classes

Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 35 (NeurIPS 2022) Main Conference Track

Shivam Garg, Dimitris Tsipras, Percy S. Liang, Gregory Valiant

In-context learning is the ability of a model to condition on a prompt sequence consisting of in-context examples (input-output pairs corresponding to some task) along with a new query input, and generate the corresponding output. Crucially, in-context learning happens only at inference time without any parameter updates to the model. While large language models such as GPT-3 exhibit some ability to perform in-context learning, it is unclear what the relationship is between tasks on which this succeeds and what is present in the training data. To investigate this, we consider the problem of training a model to in-context learn a function class (e.g., linear functions): given data derived from some functions in the class, can we train a model (e.g., a Transformer) to in-context learn most functions from that class? We show empirically that standard Transformers can be trained from scratch to perform in-context learning of linear functions---that is, the trained model is able to learn unseen linear functions from in-context examples with performance comparable to the optimal least squares estimator. In fact, in-context learning is possible even under two forms of distribution shift: (i) between the training data of the Transformer and inference-time prompts, and (ii) between the in-context examples and the query input during inference. We also show that we can train Transformers to in-context learn more complex function classes: sparse linear functions where the model outperforms least squares and nearly matches the performance of Lasso, and two-layer neural networks where the model performs comparably to neural networks trained on in-context examples using gradient descent.

Name Change Policy

Requests for name changes in the electronic proceedings will be accepted with no questions asked. However name changes may cause bibliographic tracking issues. Authors are asked to consider this carefully and discuss it with their co-authors prior to requesting a name change in the electronic proceedings.

Use the "Report an Issue" link to request a name change.

Conference Paper Format and Style Guidelines

June 23 2022 Thursday, June 23, 2022 Tips and Tricks

Founder @ Fourwaves

There are many different ways to write a conference paper. Most journals have their own requirements around specific length, document type, and the font details of pieces being submitted for publishing.

However, there are certain details that are commonly found in conference papers. Most are brief in length, attempting to explain complex concepts using simple, concise language. They typically include the article’s purpose and objectives, research methods, findings/results, conclusions, and references. 

The information covered in a conference paper is closely-related to the oral presentation that the author is hoping to make at an academic conference. These papers are often written in a format that will “match” the oral presentation with a goal to communicate a research project and its main findings, and to solicit feedback and generate interest in the work being done.

This article will define a conference research paper and describe its purpose, formats, structure and provide tips on how to write the best conference research paper possible. 

What is a conference research paper?

A conference research paper is a piece of writing that an author submits to conference organizers. The papers offer a preview of the work the researcher wants to present to let others in their field know about it and solicit feedback that could generate ideas for improvement.

These papers are submitted for review in advance of the conference. This process begins with a call-for-papers, when a conference organizing committee sends out an invitation to academics in hopes of generating multiple submissions of content to be presented at their event. These invitations can be sent via email or posted to a conference announcement website. Then, the organizing committee conducts a thorough review process to confirm the legitimacy of the work being submitted. Then, the work is either approved or rejected, and those accepted become part of the conference programme and the authors are scheduled to present at the conference .

When the event concludes, these conference papers are combined into a conference proceedings document that is often published and kept as a written record of the event. 

What is the best conference paper format?

The most commonly used conference paper formats start with a title page and abstract and go on to describe the research being conducted and the methodology being used. Conference papers should be well-structured and concise, free of grammatical errors with references formatted based on requirements set out in the call-for-papers.

How to structure a conference paper

Conference papers should be structured around the prime objectives of the research being conducted and the summary of its findings. Most conference papers start by introducing the purpose of the research, the methodology, the results of the study, and references of the sources used. 

Here are the elements that are typically included in a conference paper: 

The title page

The title page is used to identify the main pieces of information needed in order to identify and evaluate a conference paper. It includes the title of the paper, which should clearly identify the focus of the research being presented. The title page should also include the author’s name, credentials, the research institution they’re affiliated with, the submission date, and the name of the conference for which the paper is being submitted. 

While the exact format that the conference is looking for should be described in the call-for-papers sent out by event organizers, you can find templates for conference paper title pages online. Here is one example of an APA style title page you can reference. 

The abstract

Conference papers begin with an abstract. An abstract is a short summary of the prime objective of your research, your hypothesis, the way you plan to conduct the study, the results, and the conclusions. Most abstracts are one or two paragraphs and kept under 250 words, but it’s not always the case so it’s best to check the guidelines provided by the conference organizers. 

The research methodology

In order for conference organizers to review and evaluate a conference paper, they must understand the methods used by the researcher to conduct the study being presented. Include a section in your paper that clearly (but briefly) describes your methodology, including any dominant theories that the methods are based on. 

The results

Clearly outline the results of the study, drawing data-driven conclusions. Present the insights uncovered by the research and how they can be used to advance your field of study. This will generate interest from other researchers in your field, potentially leading to partnerships or funding opportunities down the road. 

Your research results should take up about one-third of your conference paper, so for a 10-page paper, this section should be no longer than 3.5 pages. Whenever possible, display quantitative results in table format to make it easy for readers to understand. 

The references

Most conferences will clearly outline the type of references they expect in their call-for-papers or advertisement soliciting research submissions. Follow these guidelines to reference the work used to inform your research. 

Most events will request APA, MLA or Chicago-style formatting, but be prepared to reference any of the common formats. As a general rule, APA is most often used in education, psychology and sciences, MLA is used in the humanities, and Chicago style is used in business, history and fine arts. 

Tips to write a conference paper

1. focus on the abstract.

The abstract is the first thing academics look at when evaluating a piece of research. If your paper is accepted, you will be presenting your work to a group of your peers, and this abstract is their preview to the information that will be discussed. You’ll want to make it clear, concise, and interesting to read. 

This is also what conference organizers use to categorize different streams of work within the conference, so it’s important that your focus and subject matter is clearly defined and easy to determine. This will ensure you’re placed alongside researchers with a related field of study. 

Begin your abstract by defining the problem you hoped to solve when you began your research. Then, describe how you went about studying that problem before presenting your research findings and how they help solve the problem. 

2. Create a logical flow

Before you start writing, take some time to create an outline that follows a logical, cohesive flow of information. Review your research and determine the most important things you want to share in your presentation, and create your outline based on this list. An outline will help you stay focused and organized, and will make creating the abstract a breeze. 

In your outline, you should also plan to include data points that back up your conclusions to make your paper strong and convincing. 

3. Be careful of length

Look into the structure of the conference and find out the length of the presentations. This is usually stated in the conference posting, but if not, you can use the following guidelines. Most conferences allot 10-20 minutes for each oral presentation, and each page of writing takes about 2 minutes to read. Based on these numbers, a conference paper should not exceed 10 pages. 

4. Follow the format guidelines

Conference organizing committees will most of the time set specific guidelines for researchers to follow in their submissions. These guidelines will include the preferred file type (.doc, .rtf. .pdf etc), the font type and size, the spacing, where they want the page numbers, the length of the abstract, reference format, and more.

This simplifies the review process by allowing the reviewers to focus solely on the paper content, rather than having to decipher references or look for specific pieces of information.

5. Read it out loud

To keep your conference paper short, it’s important that every word counts. To keep your paper free of fluff and unnecessary words, read it out loud to yourself and remove or revise anything that isn’t optimal.

Reading out loud will also help you confirm that the information you’re presenting is organized into a logical flow that builds up support for your overall argument. Sometimes words look good typed out on a screen, but they don’t sound convincing or appropriate when spoken out loud. Since this paper is an overview of the research you hope to present in an oral presentation at a conference, it should sound convincing when you read it aloud. 

6. Write for your audience

Remember that you are writing for academic researchers who are knowledgeable in your field. 

Academic writing uses a more formal tone than a blog or news article. It is free of personal opinions or anecdotes, and does not include any jargon, cliches, or slang. Academic writing maintains a clear focus on the main area of research, and every sentence should resonate with your audience of researchers. 

Every piece of data used in a piece of academic writing should be backed-up with data. Researchers reviewing your work expect to be presented with data-driven insights that can be quantifiably verified. 

Reference everything. Not only does this add weight and legitimacy to your work, but it also shows respect for the researchers who came before you.  

Useful resources for conference papers

There are many resources available to help you write and format your conference papers. These are often free, and easily-accessible online. Here are a few to check out:

Overleaf is an online LaTeX editor that provides known journals and conference paper formats. It is a helpful resource but can be difficult for those that are not very technical. 

A friend to all writers, Grammarly provides free editing and grammar checks through a simple AI-powered platform available through the web or on your mobile device. There are free or paid versions available, depending on the level of functionality you’re looking for. 

Evernote can simplify and organize your research by making it easy to collect and share notes, and keep them with you wherever you go. 

Citationsy is a relatively new application that automates the process of creating and formatting references. This can be a significant time saver and remove one of the less exciting elements of academic writing.

If you’re at the stage in your research where you’re ready to write a conference paper and apply to present at an academic conference, congratulations! This means you have conducted a significant amount of research and are ready to share it with your peers.

We hope you’ve found this article a good resource to help you write this paper. If there are any tips or pieces of information that we’ve missed, please let us know .

Follow Matthieu on:

Get more tips for event organizers and be notified of product updates.

Generate accurate APA citations for free

• Knowledge Base
• How to cite a conference paper in APA Style

Citing a Conference Paper in APA Style | Format & Examples

Published on November 6, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on December 4, 2023.

The format for citing conference papers in APA Style depends on whether the paper has been published, and if so, in what format. Note that a separate format exists for citing dissertations . You can cite a conference paper easily by using our free APA Citation Generator .

To cite a paper that has been presented at a conference but not published, include the author’s name, the date of the conference, the title of the paper (italicized), “Paper presentation” in square brackets, the name and location of the conference, and a URL or DOI if available.

Cite a conference paper in APA Style now:

Table of contents, citing a conference paper published in a journal, citing a conference paper published in a book, frequently asked questions about apa style citations.

Conference papers are sometimes published in journals. To cite one of these, use the same format as you would for any journal article .

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Conference papers may also be collected in book form. In this case, you can cite one in the same way as you would cite a chapter from a book .

Include the DOI at the very end of the APA reference entry . If you’re using the 6th edition APA guidelines, the DOI is preceded by the label “doi:”. In the 7th edition , the DOI is preceded by ‘https://doi.org/’.

• 6th edition: doi: 10.1177/0894439316660340
• 7th edition: https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0894439316660340

APA citation example (7th edition)

Hawi, N. S., & Samaha, M. (2016). The relations among social media addiction, self-esteem, and life satisfaction in university students. Social Science Computer Review , 35 (5), 576–586. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439316660340

In an APA journal citation , if a DOI (digital object identifier) is available for an article, always include it.

If an article has no DOI, and you accessed it through a database or in print, just omit the DOI.

If an article has no DOI, and you accessed it through a website other than a database (for example, the journal’s own website), include a URL linking to the article.

The abbreviation “ et al. ” (meaning “and others”) is used to shorten APA in-text citations with three or more authors . Here’s how it works:

Only include the first author’s last name, followed by “et al.”, a comma and the year of publication, for example (Taylor et al., 2018).

You may include up to 20 authors in a reference list entry .

When an article has more than 20 authors, replace the names prior to the final listed author with an ellipsis, but do not omit the final author:

Davis, Y., Smith, J., Caulfield, F., Pullman, H., Carlisle, J., Donahue, S. D., James, F., O’Donnell, K., Singh, J., Johnson, L., Streefkerk, R., McCombes, S., Corrieri, L., Valck, X., Baldwin, F. M., Lorde, J., Wardell, K., Lao, W., Yang, P., . . . O’Brien, T. (2012).

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2023, December 04). Citing a Conference Paper in APA Style | Format & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved March 12, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/apa-examples/conference-paper/

Is this article helpful?

Jack Caulfield

Other students also liked, how to cite a dissertation in apa style, how to cite a book in apa style, how to cite a journal article in apa style, scribbr apa citation checker.

An innovative new tool that checks your APA citations with AI software. Say goodbye to inaccurate citations!

• Join Login Volunteer Classified Give Give ASEE Donations...
• Mission, Vision, Goals
• Public Policy Statements
• Constitution
• Organizational Structure
• Investment Policy
• Financial Policy
• Our History
• Staff Contacts
• Board Of Directors
• Academy Of Fellows
• Past Board Members
• Advisory Committees
• Representatives to External Organizations
• Executive Director's Message
• Meeting Minutes
• Careers at ASEE
• Privacy Statement
• Your Member Page
• Membership Directory
• COVID Recovery
• Engineering Culture
• Divisions, Fellows, and Campus Reps
• Sections and Zones
• Individual Membership
• Institutional Membership
• Major Activities
• Prospective Partner or Sponsor
• About Fellowships
• High School
• Undergraduate
• Post-Doctoral
• Other Programs
• 2022 Annual Conference & Exposition
• 2021 Virtual Annual Conference & Exposition
• 2020 Virtual Annual Conference & Exposition
• Section & Zone Meetings
• Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration (CIEC)
• CMC Workforce Summit
• Engineering Deans Institute (EDI)
• Research Leadership Institute (RLI) (Formerly ERC)
• Engineering Technology Leaders Institute (ETLI)
• EDC Public Policy Colloquium (PPC)
• Frontiers in Education
• First Year Engineering Experience
• Workforce Summit
• Future Conference Dates
• Newsletters
• Division Publications
• Journal of Engineering Education
• Advances in Engineering Education
• Conference Proceedings
• Section Proceedings
• Zone Proceedings
• Monographs and Reports
• Prism Magazine
• Profiles of E&ET Colleges
• Case Study Series: Engineering-Enhanced Liberal Education
• Data Analysis
• Annual Reports
• Academic Job Opportunities
• Course Catalog
• Engineering Education Community Resource
• eGFI Teachers
• eGFI Students
• Engineering Teacher PD Endorsement

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Space shuttle case studies: challenger and columbia, presented at aerospace division technical session 1.

Scott Post received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University. He is currently an Associate Professor at Bradley University in Peoria, IL. He has previously worked as an Assistant Professor at Michigan Technological University. He has also been a summer Faculty Fellow at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, and a Visiting Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.

» Download paper

« View session

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings
• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• J Palliat Med

Writing Abstracts and Developing Posters for National Meetings

Gordon j. wood.

1 Department of Medicine, Section of Palliative Care and Medical Ethics, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

R. Sean Morrison

2 Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, and the James J. Peters VA, Bronx, New York.

Presenting posters at national meetings can help fellows and junior faculty members develop a national reputation. They often lead to interesting and fruitful networking and collaboration opportunities. They also help with promotion in academic medicine and can reveal new job opportunities. Practically, presenting posters can help justify funding to attend a meeting. Finally, this process can be invaluable in assisting with manuscript preparation. This article provides suggestions and words of wisdom for palliative care fellows and junior faculty members wanting to present a poster at a national meeting describing a case study or original research. It outlines how to pick a topic, decide on collaborators, and choose a meeting for the submission. It also describes how to write the abstract using examples that present a general format as well as writing tips for each section. It then describes how to prepare the poster and do the presentation. Sample poster formats are provided as are talking points to help the reader productively interact with those that visit the poster. Finally, tips are given regarding what to do after the meeting. The article seeks to not only describe the basic steps of this entire process, but also to highlight the hidden curriculum behind the successful abstracts and posters. These tricks of the trade can help the submission stand out and will make sure the reader gets the most out of the hard work that goes into a poster presentation at a national meeting.

Introduction

A track record of successful presentations at national meetings is important for the junior academic palliative medicine clinician. Unfortunately, palliative care fellows report minimal training in how to even start the process by writing the abstract. 1 What follows is a practical, step-by-step guide aimed at the palliative care fellow or junior palliative care faculty member who is hoping to present original research or a case study at a national meeting. We will discuss the rationale for presenting at national meetings, development of the abstract, creation and conduct of the presentation, as well as what to do after the meeting. We will draw on the literature where available 2 – 7 and on our experience where data are lacking. We will focus on the development of posters rather than oral presentations or workshops as these are typically the first and more common experiences for junior faculty and fellows. Finally, in addition to discussing the nuts and bolts of the process, we will also focus on the “hidden curriculum” behind the successful submissions and poster presentations (see Table 1 ).

The Hidden Curriculum: Tips To Get the Most Out of Your Submission

Why Present at National Meetings?

Given that it takes a fair amount of work to put together an abstract and presentation, it is fair to ask what is to be gained from the effort. The standard answer is that presentations at national meetings aid in the dissemination of your findings and help further the field. Although this is certainly true, there are also several practical and personal reasons that should hold at least equal importance to fellows or junior faculty members (see Table 2 ). Perhaps most importantly, presenting at a national meeting helps develop your national reputation. People will begin to know your name and associate it with the topic you are presenting. Additionally, it provides an opportunity to network and collaborate, which can then lead to other projects. Many of us have begun life-long collaborative relationships after connecting with someone at a national meeting. Even if you don't make a personal connection at the meeting, if people begin to associate your name with a topic, they will often reach out to you when they need an expert to sit on a committee, write a paper, or collaborate on a project.

Personal Reasons To Present Abstracts/Posters

Development of a national reputation is important not only in garnering interesting opportunities, but it is also key to career advancement. For fellows, presenting at national meetings can forge connections with future employers and lead to that all-important “first job.” For junior faculty, demonstration of a national reputation is often the main criterion for promotion and presentations at national meetings help establish this reputation. 8 Junior faculty may also make connections that lead to potential job opportunities of which they might not otherwise have been aware.

There are three additional practical reasons to present at a national meeting. First, having something accepted for presentation is often the only way your department will reimburse your trip to the meeting. Second, going through the work of abstract submission and presentation helps tremendously in manuscript preparation. It provides a deadline and forces you to organize your thoughts, analyze your data, and place them in an understandable format. This makes the eventual job of writing the manuscript much less daunting. Third, presenting also allows you to get immediate feedback, which can then make the manuscript stronger before it is submitted. Such feedback often gives the presenter additional ideas for analyses, alternate explanations for findings, and ideas regarding future directions.

Although these personal and practical reasons for presenting are derived from our own experiences, they are concordant with the survey results of 219 presenters at the Society of General Internal Medicine Annual Meeting. 9 This survey also highlighted how posters and oral presentations can meet these needs differently. For example, for these presenters, posters were preferred for getting feedback and criticism and for networking and collaborating. Oral presentations, on the other hand, were preferred for developing a national reputation and sharing important findings most effectively. For all of these reasons, many academic centers have developed highly effective programs for trainees and junior faculty to help encourage submissions 10 , 11 so it is wise to seek out such programs if they exist in your home institution.

Getting Started

Realizing the importance of presenting at national meetings may be the easy part. Actually getting started and putting together a submission is where most fall short. The critical first step is to pick something that interests you. For original research, hopefully your level of interest was a consideration at the beginning of the project, although how anxious you are to work on the submission may be a good barometer for your true investment in the project.

For case studies, make sure the topic, and ideally the case, fuel a passion. Unlike original research, in which mentors and advisors are usually established at study conception, case studies often require you to seek appropriate collaborators when contemplating submission. It is the rare submission that comes from a single author. In choosing collaborators, look for a senior mentor with experience submitting posters and an investment in both you and the topic. There is nothing more disheartening for the junior clinician than having to harass a mentor whose heart is not in the project.

Another critical step is to choose the right meeting for the submission. Although many submissions may be to palliative care meetings (e.g., American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine), there is great benefit to both the field and your career in presenting at other specialty meetings. Presentations at well-recognized nonpalliative care meetings further legitimize the field, increase your national visibility, and lead to interesting and fruitful collaborations. Additionally, these types of presentations may be looked on with more favor by people reviewing your CV who are not intimately familiar with the world of palliative care. Table 1 presents some questions you should discuss with your mentor and ask yourself when choosing a meeting. Some of these questions may have conflicting answers, and you should be thoughtful in weighing what is most important.

Once you have chosen your meeting, go to the meeting's website and review all of the instructions. Check requirements regarding what material can be presented. For example, many meetings will allow you to present data that were already presented at a regional meeting but not data that were previously presented at another national meeting. Most meetings also do not allow you to present data that are already published, although it is generally acceptable to submit your abstract at the same time you submit your paper for publication. If the paper is published before the meeting, make sure to inform the committee—most often you will still be able to present but will be asked to note the publication in your presentation. Regarding the submission, most conferences have very specific instructions and the rules are strict. The applications are generally online with preset fields and word limits. It is helpful to examine review criteria and deadlines for submission, paying particular attention to time zones. Finally, it can be invaluable to read published abstracts from the last meeting and to talk with prior presenters to get a sense of the types of abstracts that are accepted.

The next step is to start writing. The key to success is to leave enough time as there are often unavoidable and unplanned technical issues with the online submission that you will confront. Additionally, you will want to leave time to get input from all of the authors and from people who have not been primarily involved in the project—to make sure that a “naïve” audience understands the message of the abstract. Finally, remember that an abstract/poster does not have to represent all of the data for a study and can just present an interesting piece of the story.

Most submissions require several rewrites. These can become frustrating, but it is important to realize that there is a very specific language for these types of submissions that your mentor should know and that you will learn over time. The most common issue is the need to shorten the abstract to fit the word limit. Strategies to ensure brevity include using the active voice, employing generic rather than trade names for drugs and devices, and avoiding jargon and local lingo. Use no more than two or three abbreviations and always define the abbreviations on first use. Do a spelling/grammar check and also have someone proofread the document before submitting. References are generally not included on abstracts. Most importantly, be concise, write lean, and avoid empty phrases such as “studies show.” A review of 45 abstracts submitted to a national surgical meeting found that concise abstracts were more likely to be accepted, 12 and this small study certainly reflects our experiences as submitters and reviewers.

The Abstract for an Original Research Study

The styles of abstracts for original studies vary. Guidelines exist for manuscript abstracts reporting various types of original research (CONSORT, 13 – 15 IDCRD, 16 PRISMA, 17 QUOROM, and STROBE 18 ) and review of these guidelines can be helpful to provide a format. There are also guidelines that exist for evaluating conference abstracts that may be informative, such as the CORE-14 guidelines for observational studies. 19 In general, a structured abstract style is favored. 20 – 21 In this paper, we will present general styles for each type of abstract that will need to be adapted to the type of study and the rules of the conference. Table 3 outlines the general format for an abstract for original research. Each section contains tips for how to write the section, rather than example text from a study. Therefore, you may find it most helpful to review the figures alongside examples of previously accepted abstracts.

Abstract for an Original Research Study

In any abstract, it is particularly important to focus on the title as it is often the only item people will look at while scanning the meeting program or wandering through the poster session. It should be no more than 10–12 words 2 and should describe what was investigated and how, instead of what was found. It should be engaging, but be cautious with too much use of humor as this can become tiresome and distracting. Below the title, list authors and their affiliations. The remaining sections of the abstract are discussed in the figure.

The Abstract for a Case Study

The abstract for a case study contains many of the same elements as the abstract for original research with a few important differences. Most importantly, you need to use the abstract to highlight the importance of the issue the case raises and convince the reader that both the case and the issue are interesting, novel, and relevant. A general format is provided in Table 4 .

Abstract for a Case Study

Preparing Posters

Once the abstract is prepared, submitted, and, hopefully, accepted, your next job is to prepare the presentation. Whereas a few select abstracts are typically selected for oral presentation (usually 8–10 minutes followed by a short question-and-answer period), the majority of submitted abstracts will be assigned to poster sessions. (Readers interested in advice for oral presentations are referred to reference 22 ). Posters are large (generally approximately 3 × 6 ft) visual representations of your work. Most posters are now one-piece glossy prints from graphics departments or commercial stores, although increasingly academic departments have access to printing facilities that may be less expensive than commercial stores. Additionally, many meetings now partner with on-site printing services, which are convenient and reasonably priced. Generally, the material is prepared on a PowerPoint (or equivalent) slide and this is given to the production facility. The easiest way to prepare your first poster is to ask your institution if it has a preferred or required template. If such a template does not exist, ask for a trusted colleague's slide from an accepted poster. This gives you the format and institutional logos, and you simply need to modify the content. In preparing your poster for printing, review the meeting instructions and try to make your poster as close to the maximum dimensions as possible. Try to complete the poster early to allow for production delays. Consider shipping your poster to the conference or carry it in a protective case and check with the airline regarding luggage requirements. On-site printing eliminates travel hassles but does not allow much time for any problems that may arise.

What goes on the poster?

Both the content and the visual appeal of the poster are important. In fact, one study found that visual appeal was more important than content for knowledge transfer. 23 Although the poster expands the content of your abstract, resist the urge to include too much information. It is helpful to remember the rule of 10s: the average person scans your poster for 10 seconds from 10 feet away. When someone stops, you should be able to introduce your poster in 10 seconds and they should be able to assimilate all of the information and discuss it with you in 10 minutes. 3 Figures 1 and ​ and2 2 show the layouts of posters for a case and for an original study. The general rule is to keep each section as short and simple as possible, which allows for a font large enough (nothing smaller than 24 point 4 ) for easy reading of the title from 10 feet away and the text from 3–5 feet away. Leave blank space and use colors judiciously. Easily read and interpretable figures and simple tables are more visually appealing than text, and they are typically more effective in getting one's message across. It is helpful to get feedback on one's poster before finalizing and printing—ideally from people not familiar with the work to get a true objective view.

Poster for original research.

Poster for case study.

Although it may seem simple enough to prepare a good poster, many fall short. One author reviewed 142 posters at a national meeting and found that 33% were cluttered or sloppy, 22% had fonts that were too small to be easily read, and 38% had research objectives that could not be located in a 1-minute review. 5 Another study of an evaluation tool for case report posters found that the areas most needing improvement were statements of learning objectives, linkages of conclusions to learning objectives, and appropriate amount of words. 24

The Poster Presentation

Posters are presented at “Poster Sessions,” which are designated periods during the meeting when presenters stand by their posters while conference attendees circulate through the room. Refreshments are often served during these sessions and the atmosphere is generally more relaxed and less stressful than during oral presentations. Additionally, the one-on-one contact allows greater opportunity for discussion, feedback, and networking. Awards are often presented to the best posters and ribbons may designate these posters during the session.

The first step to a successful poster presentation is to simply show up. Surveys of conference attendees clearly indicate that it is necessary for the presenter to be with his/her poster for effective communication of the results. 23 This is also your time to grow your reputation, network, and get feedback, so do not miss the opportunity to reap the rewards of your hard work. In preparation, read any specific conference instructions and bring business cards and handouts of the poster or related materials. While standing at your poster, make eye contact with people who approach but allow them to finish reading before beginning a discussion. 4 As noted above, you should be prepared to introduce your poster in 10 seconds then answer questions and discuss as needed. Practicing your introduction and answers to common questions with colleagues before the meeting can be invaluable. Before your presentation, your mentor should also contact important people in the field related to your topic and ask them to come by your poster. You should have a list of these people and know who they are and when they are coming. Standard questions you may ask are included in Table 1 . You should also have prepared questions targeted specifically for each of the people your mentor has contacted. You should then suggest these people as reviewers when you submit your manuscript.

After the Presentation

After the presentation, key steps remain to get the most out of the process. First, ask for feedback so you can make adjustments for the next presentation. Also, think about what parts of the poster you can use for other reasons. It is often helpful to export a graph or figure to use in future presentations. The key is to “double-dip” and use everything to its fullest extent. In addition, to make the maximal use of the networking opportunities you should follow up with anyone who asked for more information or inquired about collaborations. In the excitement of the meeting anything seems possible, but it is easy to lose that momentum when you get home. In one study, only 29% of presenters replied to requests for additional information, and they generally took over 30 days to respond. 25

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it is critical to write up your work for publication. Although posters are important, publications are the true currency of academia. Unfortunately, the percentage of abstracts that are eventually published is low. 26 When asked why they had yet to publish, respondents in one study 27 cited: lacked time (46%), study still in progress (31%), responsibility for publication belonged to someone else (20%), difficulty with co-authors (17%), and low priority (13%). Factors that have been shown to increase the likelihood of abstract publication include: oral presentation (as opposed to a poster), statistical analysis, number of authors, and university affiliation. 28 – 31 Time to publication is generally about 20 months. 29

Conclusions

Writing abstracts and developing posters for national meetings benefit the field in general and the junior clinician in particular. This process develops critical skills and generates innumerable opportunities. We have presented a stepwise approach based on the literature and our personal experiences. We have also highlighted the hidden curriculum that separates the successful submissions from the rest of the pack. Hopefully, these tools will help palliative care fellows and junior faculty more easily navigate the process and benefit the most from the work they put into their projects.

Acknowledgments

Dr. Morrison is supported by a Mid-Career Investigator Award in Patient Oriented Research from the National Institute on Aging (K24 AG022345). A portion of this work was funded by the National Palliative Care Research Center.

Author Disclosure Statement

No competing financial interests exist.

Help | Advanced Search

Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence

Title: towards general computer control: a multimodal agent for red dead redemption ii as a case study.

Abstract: Despite the success in specific tasks and scenarios, existing foundation agents, empowered by large models (LMs) and advanced tools, still cannot generalize to different scenarios, mainly due to dramatic differences in the observations and actions across scenarios. In this work, we propose the General Computer Control (GCC) setting: building foundation agents that can master any computer task by taking only screen images (and possibly audio) of the computer as input, and producing keyboard and mouse operations as output, similar to human-computer interaction. The main challenges of achieving GCC are: 1) the multimodal observations for decision-making, 2) the requirements of accurate control of keyboard and mouse, 3) the need for long-term memory and reasoning, and 4) the abilities of efficient exploration and self-improvement. To target GCC, we introduce Cradle, an agent framework with six main modules, including: 1) information gathering to extract multi-modality information, 2) self-reflection to rethink past experiences, 3) task inference to choose the best next task, 4) skill curation for generating and updating relevant skills for given tasks, 5) action planning to generate specific operations for keyboard and mouse control, and 6) memory for storage and retrieval of past experiences and known skills. To demonstrate the capabilities of generalization and self-improvement of Cradle, we deploy it in the complex AAA game Red Dead Redemption II, serving as a preliminary attempt towards GCC with a challenging target. To our best knowledge, our work is the first to enable LMM-based agents to follow the main storyline and finish real missions in complex AAA games, with minimal reliance on prior knowledge or resources. The project website is at this https URL .

Submission history

Access paper:.

• Download PDF
• HTML (experimental)
• Other Formats

References & Citations

• Google Scholar
• Semantic Scholar

BibTeX formatted citation

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Code, data and media associated with this article, recommenders and search tools.

• Institution

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs .

Subscribe to the PwC Newsletter

Join the community, edit social preview.

Add a new code entry for this paper

Remove a code repository from this paper, mark the official implementation from paper authors, add a new evaluation result row.

• LANGUAGE MODELLING
• LARGE LANGUAGE MODEL

Remove a task

Add a method

Remove a method, edit datasets, monitoring ai-modified content at scale: a case study on the impact of chatgpt on ai conference peer reviews.

11 Mar 2024  ·  Weixin Liang , Zachary Izzo , Yaohui Zhang , Haley Lepp , Hancheng Cao , Xuandong Zhao , Lingjiao Chen , Haotian Ye , Sheng Liu , Zhi Huang , Daniel A. McFarland , James Y. Zou · Edit social preview

We present an approach for estimating the fraction of text in a large corpus which is likely to be substantially modified or produced by a large language model (LLM). Our maximum likelihood model leverages expert-written and AI-generated reference texts to accurately and efficiently examine real-world LLM-use at the corpus level. We apply this approach to a case study of scientific peer review in AI conferences that took place after the release of ChatGPT: ICLR 2024, NeurIPS 2023, CoRL 2023 and EMNLP 2023. Our results suggest that between 6.5% and 16.9% of text submitted as peer reviews to these conferences could have been substantially modified by LLMs, i.e. beyond spell-checking or minor writing updates. The circumstances in which generated text occurs offer insight into user behavior: the estimated fraction of LLM-generated text is higher in reviews which report lower confidence, were submitted close to the deadline, and from reviewers who are less likely to respond to author rebuttals. We also observe corpus-level trends in generated text which may be too subtle to detect at the individual level, and discuss the implications of such trends on peer review. We call for future interdisciplinary work to examine how LLM use is changing our information and knowledge practices.

Code Edit Add Remove Mark official

Tasks edit add remove, datasets edit, results from the paper edit add remove, methods edit add remove.

A generative AI reset: Rewiring to turn potential into value in 2024

It’s time for a generative AI (gen AI) reset. The initial enthusiasm and flurry of activity in 2023 is giving way to second thoughts and recalibrations as companies realize that capturing gen AI’s enormous potential value is harder than expected .

With 2024 shaping up to be the year for gen AI to prove its value, companies should keep in mind the hard lessons learned with digital and AI transformations: competitive advantage comes from building organizational and technological capabilities to broadly innovate, deploy, and improve solutions at scale—in effect, rewiring the business  for distributed digital and AI innovation.

About QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey

QuantumBlack, McKinsey’s AI arm, helps companies transform using the power of technology, technical expertise, and industry experts. With thousands of practitioners at QuantumBlack (data engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, and software engineers) and McKinsey (industry and domain experts), we are working to solve the world’s most important AI challenges. QuantumBlack Labs is our center of technology development and client innovation, which has been driving cutting-edge advancements and developments in AI through locations across the globe.

Companies looking to score early wins with gen AI should move quickly. But those hoping that gen AI offers a shortcut past the tough—and necessary—organizational surgery are likely to meet with disappointing results. Launching pilots is (relatively) easy; getting pilots to scale and create meaningful value is hard because they require a broad set of changes to the way work actually gets done.

Let’s briefly look at what this has meant for one Pacific region telecommunications company. The company hired a chief data and AI officer with a mandate to “enable the organization to create value with data and AI.” The chief data and AI officer worked with the business to develop the strategic vision and implement the road map for the use cases. After a scan of domains (that is, customer journeys or functions) and use case opportunities across the enterprise, leadership prioritized the home-servicing/maintenance domain to pilot and then scale as part of a larger sequencing of initiatives. They targeted, in particular, the development of a gen AI tool to help dispatchers and service operators better predict the types of calls and parts needed when servicing homes.

Leadership put in place cross-functional product teams with shared objectives and incentives to build the gen AI tool. As part of an effort to upskill the entire enterprise to better work with data and gen AI tools, they also set up a data and AI academy, which the dispatchers and service operators enrolled in as part of their training. To provide the technology and data underpinnings for gen AI, the chief data and AI officer also selected a large language model (LLM) and cloud provider that could meet the needs of the domain as well as serve other parts of the enterprise. The chief data and AI officer also oversaw the implementation of a data architecture so that the clean and reliable data (including service histories and inventory databases) needed to build the gen AI tool could be delivered quickly and responsibly.

Our book Rewired: The McKinsey Guide to Outcompeting in the Age of Digital and AI (Wiley, June 2023) provides a detailed manual on the six capabilities needed to deliver the kind of broad change that harnesses digital and AI technology. In this article, we will explore how to extend each of those capabilities to implement a successful gen AI program at scale. While recognizing that these are still early days and that there is much more to learn, our experience has shown that breaking open the gen AI opportunity requires companies to rewire how they work in the following ways.

Figure out where gen AI copilots can give you a real competitive advantage

The broad excitement around gen AI and its relative ease of use has led to a burst of experimentation across organizations. Most of these initiatives, however, won’t generate a competitive advantage. One bank, for example, bought tens of thousands of GitHub Copilot licenses, but since it didn’t have a clear sense of how to work with the technology, progress was slow. Another unfocused effort we often see is when companies move to incorporate gen AI into their customer service capabilities. Customer service is a commodity capability, not part of the core business, for most companies. While gen AI might help with productivity in such cases, it won’t create a competitive advantage.

To create competitive advantage, companies should first understand the difference between being a “taker” (a user of available tools, often via APIs and subscription services), a “shaper” (an integrator of available models with proprietary data), and a “maker” (a builder of LLMs). For now, the maker approach is too expensive for most companies, so the sweet spot for businesses is implementing a taker model for productivity improvements while building shaper applications for competitive advantage.

Much of gen AI’s near-term value is closely tied to its ability to help people do their current jobs better. In this way, gen AI tools act as copilots that work side by side with an employee, creating an initial block of code that a developer can adapt, for example, or drafting a requisition order for a new part that a maintenance worker in the field can review and submit (see sidebar “Copilot examples across three generative AI archetypes”). This means companies should be focusing on where copilot technology can have the biggest impact on their priority programs.

Copilot examples across three generative AI archetypes

• “Taker” copilots help real estate customers sift through property options and find the most promising one, write code for a developer, and summarize investor transcripts.
• “Shaper” copilots provide recommendations to sales reps for upselling customers by connecting generative AI tools to customer relationship management systems, financial systems, and customer behavior histories; create virtual assistants to personalize treatments for patients; and recommend solutions for maintenance workers based on historical data.
• “Maker” copilots are foundation models that lab scientists at pharmaceutical companies can use to find and test new and better drugs more quickly.

Some industrial companies, for example, have identified maintenance as a critical domain for their business. Reviewing maintenance reports and spending time with workers on the front lines can help determine where a gen AI copilot could make a big difference, such as in identifying issues with equipment failures quickly and early on. A gen AI copilot can also help identify root causes of truck breakdowns and recommend resolutions much more quickly than usual, as well as act as an ongoing source for best practices or standard operating procedures.

The challenge with copilots is figuring out how to generate revenue from increased productivity. In the case of customer service centers, for example, companies can stop recruiting new agents and use attrition to potentially achieve real financial gains. Defining the plans for how to generate revenue from the increased productivity up front, therefore, is crucial to capturing the value.

Upskill the talent you have but be clear about the gen-AI-specific skills you need

By now, most companies have a decent understanding of the technical gen AI skills they need, such as model fine-tuning, vector database administration, prompt engineering, and context engineering. In many cases, these are skills that you can train your existing workforce to develop. Those with existing AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities have a strong head start. Data engineers, for example, can learn multimodal processing and vector database management, MLOps (ML operations) engineers can extend their skills to LLMOps (LLM operations), and data scientists can develop prompt engineering, bias detection, and fine-tuning skills.

A sample of new generative AI skills needed

The following are examples of new skills needed for the successful deployment of generative AI tools:

• data scientist:
• prompt engineering
• in-context learning
• bias detection
• pattern identification
• reinforcement learning from human feedback
• hyperparameter/large language model fine-tuning; transfer learning
• data engineer:
• data wrangling and data warehousing
• data pipeline construction
• multimodal processing
• vector database management

The learning process can take two to three months to get to a decent level of competence because of the complexities in learning what various LLMs can and can’t do and how best to use them. The coders need to gain experience building software, testing, and validating answers, for example. It took one financial-services company three months to train its best data scientists to a high level of competence. While courses and documentation are available—many LLM providers have boot camps for developers—we have found that the most effective way to build capabilities at scale is through apprenticeship, training people to then train others, and building communities of practitioners. Rotating experts through teams to train others, scheduling regular sessions for people to share learnings, and hosting biweekly documentation review sessions are practices that have proven successful in building communities of practitioners (see sidebar “A sample of new generative AI skills needed”).

It’s important to bear in mind that successful gen AI skills are about more than coding proficiency. Our experience in developing our own gen AI platform, Lilli , showed us that the best gen AI technical talent has design skills to uncover where to focus solutions, contextual understanding to ensure the most relevant and high-quality answers are generated, collaboration skills to work well with knowledge experts (to test and validate answers and develop an appropriate curation approach), strong forensic skills to figure out causes of breakdowns (is the issue the data, the interpretation of the user’s intent, the quality of metadata on embeddings, or something else?), and anticipation skills to conceive of and plan for possible outcomes and to put the right kind of tracking into their code. A pure coder who doesn’t intrinsically have these skills may not be as useful a team member.

While current upskilling is largely based on a “learn on the job” approach, we see a rapid market emerging for people who have learned these skills over the past year. That skill growth is moving quickly. GitHub reported that developers were working on gen AI projects “in big numbers,” and that 65,000 public gen AI projects were created on its platform in 2023—a jump of almost 250 percent over the previous year. If your company is just starting its gen AI journey, you could consider hiring two or three senior engineers who have built a gen AI shaper product for their companies. This could greatly accelerate your efforts.

Form a centralized team to establish standards that enable responsible scaling

To ensure that all parts of the business can scale gen AI capabilities, centralizing competencies is a natural first move. The critical focus for this central team will be to develop and put in place protocols and standards to support scale, ensuring that teams can access models while also minimizing risk and containing costs. The team’s work could include, for example, procuring models and prescribing ways to access them, developing standards for data readiness, setting up approved prompt libraries, and allocating resources.

While developing Lilli, our team had its mind on scale when it created an open plug-in architecture and setting standards for how APIs should function and be built.  They developed standardized tooling and infrastructure where teams could securely experiment and access a GPT LLM , a gateway with preapproved APIs that teams could access, and a self-serve developer portal. Our goal is that this approach, over time, can help shift “Lilli as a product” (that a handful of teams use to build specific solutions) to “Lilli as a platform” (that teams across the enterprise can access to build other products).

For teams developing gen AI solutions, squad composition will be similar to AI teams but with data engineers and data scientists with gen AI experience and more contributors from risk management, compliance, and legal functions. The general idea of staffing squads with resources that are federated from the different expertise areas will not change, but the skill composition of a gen-AI-intensive squad will.

Set up the technology architecture to scale

Building a gen AI model is often relatively straightforward, but making it fully operational at scale is a different matter entirely. We’ve seen engineers build a basic chatbot in a week, but releasing a stable, accurate, and compliant version that scales can take four months. That’s why, our experience shows, the actual model costs may be less than 10 to 15 percent of the total costs of the solution.

Building for scale doesn’t mean building a new technology architecture. But it does mean focusing on a few core decisions that simplify and speed up processes without breaking the bank. Three such decisions stand out:

• Focus on reusing your technology. Reusing code can increase the development speed of gen AI use cases by 30 to 50 percent. One good approach is simply creating a source for approved tools, code, and components. A financial-services company, for example, created a library of production-grade tools, which had been approved by both the security and legal teams, and made them available in a library for teams to use. More important is taking the time to identify and build those capabilities that are common across the most priority use cases. The same financial-services company, for example, identified three components that could be reused for more than 100 identified use cases. By building those first, they were able to generate a significant portion of the code base for all the identified use cases—essentially giving every application a big head start.
• Focus the architecture on enabling efficient connections between gen AI models and internal systems. For gen AI models to work effectively in the shaper archetype, they need access to a business’s data and applications. Advances in integration and orchestration frameworks have significantly reduced the effort required to make those connections. But laying out what those integrations are and how to enable them is critical to ensure these models work efficiently and to avoid the complexity that creates technical debt  (the “tax” a company pays in terms of time and resources needed to redress existing technology issues). Chief information officers and chief technology officers can define reference architectures and integration standards for their organizations. Key elements should include a model hub, which contains trained and approved models that can be provisioned on demand; standard APIs that act as bridges connecting gen AI models to applications or data; and context management and caching, which speed up processing by providing models with relevant information from enterprise data sources.
• Build up your testing and quality assurance capabilities. Our own experience building Lilli taught us to prioritize testing over development. Our team invested in not only developing testing protocols for each stage of development but also aligning the entire team so that, for example, it was clear who specifically needed to sign off on each stage of the process. This slowed down initial development but sped up the overall delivery pace and quality by cutting back on errors and the time needed to fix mistakes.

Ensure data quality and focus on unstructured data to fuel your models

The ability of a business to generate and scale value from gen AI models will depend on how well it takes advantage of its own data. As with technology, targeted upgrades to existing data architecture  are needed to maximize the future strategic benefits of gen AI:

• Be targeted in ramping up your data quality and data augmentation efforts. While data quality has always been an important issue, the scale and scope of data that gen AI models can use—especially unstructured data—has made this issue much more consequential. For this reason, it’s critical to get the data foundations right, from clarifying decision rights to defining clear data processes to establishing taxonomies so models can access the data they need. The companies that do this well tie their data quality and augmentation efforts to the specific AI/gen AI application and use case—you don’t need this data foundation to extend to every corner of the enterprise. This could mean, for example, developing a new data repository for all equipment specifications and reported issues to better support maintenance copilot applications.
• Understand what value is locked into your unstructured data. Most organizations have traditionally focused their data efforts on structured data (values that can be organized in tables, such as prices and features). But the real value from LLMs comes from their ability to work with unstructured data (for example, PowerPoint slides, videos, and text). Companies can map out which unstructured data sources are most valuable and establish metadata tagging standards so models can process the data and teams can find what they need (tagging is particularly important to help companies remove data from models as well, if necessary). Be creative in thinking about data opportunities. Some companies, for example, are interviewing senior employees as they retire and feeding that captured institutional knowledge into an LLM to help improve their copilot performance.
• Optimize to lower costs at scale. There is often as much as a tenfold difference between what companies pay for data and what they could be paying if they optimized their data infrastructure and underlying costs. This issue often stems from companies scaling their proofs of concept without optimizing their data approach. Two costs generally stand out. One is storage costs arising from companies uploading terabytes of data into the cloud and wanting that data available 24/7. In practice, companies rarely need more than 10 percent of their data to have that level of availability, and accessing the rest over a 24- or 48-hour period is a much cheaper option. The other costs relate to computation with models that require on-call access to thousands of processors to run. This is especially the case when companies are building their own models (the maker archetype) but also when they are using pretrained models and running them with their own data and use cases (the shaper archetype). Companies could take a close look at how they can optimize computation costs on cloud platforms—for instance, putting some models in a queue to run when processors aren’t being used (such as when Americans go to bed and consumption of computing services like Netflix decreases) is a much cheaper option.

Build trust and reusability to drive adoption and scale

Because many people have concerns about gen AI, the bar on explaining how these tools work is much higher than for most solutions. People who use the tools want to know how they work, not just what they do. So it’s important to invest extra time and money to build trust by ensuring model accuracy and making it easy to check answers.

One insurance company, for example, created a gen AI tool to help manage claims. As part of the tool, it listed all the guardrails that had been put in place, and for each answer provided a link to the sentence or page of the relevant policy documents. The company also used an LLM to generate many variations of the same question to ensure answer consistency. These steps, among others, were critical to helping end users build trust in the tool.

Part of the training for maintenance teams using a gen AI tool should be to help them understand the limitations of models and how best to get the right answers. That includes teaching workers strategies to get to the best answer as fast as possible by starting with broad questions then narrowing them down. This provides the model with more context, and it also helps remove any bias of the people who might think they know the answer already. Having model interfaces that look and feel the same as existing tools also helps users feel less pressured to learn something new each time a new application is introduced.

Getting to scale means that businesses will need to stop building one-off solutions that are hard to use for other similar use cases. One global energy and materials company, for example, has established ease of reuse as a key requirement for all gen AI models, and has found in early iterations that 50 to 60 percent of its components can be reused. This means setting standards for developing gen AI assets (for example, prompts and context) that can be easily reused for other cases.

While many of the risk issues relating to gen AI are evolutions of discussions that were already brewing—for instance, data privacy, security, bias risk, job displacement, and intellectual property protection—gen AI has greatly expanded that risk landscape. Just 21 percent of companies reporting AI adoption say they have established policies governing employees’ use of gen AI technologies.

Similarly, a set of tests for AI/gen AI solutions should be established to demonstrate that data privacy, debiasing, and intellectual property protection are respected. Some organizations, in fact, are proposing to release models accompanied with documentation that details their performance characteristics. Documenting your decisions and rationales can be particularly helpful in conversations with regulators.

In some ways, this article is premature—so much is changing that we’ll likely have a profoundly different understanding of gen AI and its capabilities in a year’s time. But the core truths of finding value and driving change will still apply. How well companies have learned those lessons may largely determine how successful they’ll be in capturing that value.

The authors wish to thank Michael Chui, Juan Couto, Ben Ellencweig, Josh Gartner, Bryce Hall, Holger Harreis, Phil Hudelson, Suzana Iacob, Sid Kamath, Neerav Kingsland, Kitti Lakner, Robert Levin, Matej Macak, Lapo Mori, Alex Peluffo, Aldo Rosales, Erik Roth, Abdul Wahab Shaikh, and Stephen Xu for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Barr Seitz, an editorial director in the New York office.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier

Rewired to outcompete

Meet Lilli, our generative AI tool that’s a researcher, a time saver, and an inspiration

Skip to main navigation

• Email Updates
• Federal Court Finder

Conference Acts to Promote Random Case Assignment

Published on March 12, 2024

The Judicial Conference of the United States has strengthened the policy governing random case assignment, limiting the ability of litigants to effectively choose judges in certain cases by where they file a lawsuit.

The policy addresses all civil actions that seek to bar or mandate state or federal actions, “whether by declaratory judgment and/or any form of injunctive relief.” In such cases, judges would be assigned through a district-wide random selection process.

“Since 1995, the Judicial Conference has strongly supported the random assignment of cases and the notion that all district judges remain generalists,” said Judge Robert J. Conrad, Jr., secretary of the Conference. “The random case-assignment policy deters judge-shopping and the assignment of cases based on the perceived merits or abilities of a particular judge. It promotes the impartiality of proceedings and bolsters public confidence in the federal Judiciary.”

In most of the nation’s 94 federal district courts, local case assignment plans facilitate the random selection of judges. Some plans assign cases to a judge in the division of the court where the case is filed. In divisions where only a single judge sits, these rules have made it possible for a litigant to pre-select that judge by filing in that division. 

In a November 2021 letter, Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), and Patrick Leahy, a Vermont senator who since has retired, raised concerns about a concentration of patent cases filed in single-judge divisions. 

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., referenced this letter in his 2021 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary , calling for a study of judicial assignment practices in patent cases.

“Senators from both sides of the aisle have expressed concern that case assignment procedures … might, in effect, enable the plaintiff to select a particular judge to hear a case,” Roberts said. During the patent-case study, the Court Administration and Case Management Committee (CACM) determined that similar issues might occur in bankruptcy and other types of civil litigation. Public debate grew when several highly controversial lawsuits, seeking nationwide injunctions against federal government policies, were filed in single-judge court divisions.

In submitting the proposed policy to the Judicial Conference, the CACM Committee said that some local case assignment plans risked creating an appearance of “judge shopping.” The committee also noted that the value of trying a civil case in the nearest court division becomes less important when the impact of a ruling might be felt statewide or even nationally.

The amended policy applies to cases involving state or federal laws, rules, regulations, policies, or executive branch orders. District courts may continue to assign cases to a single-judge division when they do not seek to bar or mandate state or federal actions, whether by declaratory judgment and/or any form of injunctive relief.

In addition to the Judiciary policy, the CACM committee will disseminate guidance to all district courts regarding civil case assignment.

The  26-member Judicial Conference  is the policy-making body for the federal court system. By statute, the Chief Justice of the United States serves as its presiding officer and its members are the chief judges of the 13 courts of appeals, a district judge from each of the 12 geographic circuits, and the chief judge of the Court of International Trade.

The Conference convenes twice a year to consider administrative and policy issues affecting the court system.

Related Topics:  Judicial Conference of the United States