Conference proceedings are a collection of abstracts and papers presented at conferences. They often present preliminary research findings and the full results may be published in a journal some time later.
Not all conferences publish proceedings. Proceedings that are published may be part of a book, a special issue of a journal, free on the web, or distributed to conference attendees only.
Commonly used synonyms for conference include:
Conference proceedings may contribute valuable insights into a particular field of research and should be considered when undertaking a comprehensive literature review, particularly in science and health.
The publication process for conference proceedings is normally shorter than for journals so they can provide insights into industry and discipline trends, as well as point to the most current research/studies/trials in a particular field.
The information disseminated through conference proceedings is often not reported anywhere else, or at least not for some time.
The papers presented at a conference have typically been accepted following a review process, however, not all published proceedings are peer reviewed so it is important to assess the quality of the conference. Criteria to consider:
Consider filtering your results further, by Publication Date and Discipline for example.
Most conference papers will be part of a journal or a published proceeding. Full-text of the published proceedings may not be available via FiNDit but there are other ways you can get access (check out the other tabs in this section), so don't apply the Full Text Online filter or you will miss these.
Major databases often index conference proceedings. Depending on the type of database, they may provide access to the abstracts, but not the full-text. Use the abstract to determine whether or not you should pursue access to the full-text.
To find conference material in a database, simply search for your topic. then limit or filter the results by a relevant Document type. Databases might use different words to describe this material, but generally you are looking for terms like "proceedings" or "conference abstracts".
A browser extension like LibKey Nomad will automatically look for full text access through Notre Dame library's collection. If that doesn't work, check out the info in this section under Google and Still can't find it?
Large citation databases like Scopus and Web of Science are a good place to start looking for conference materials, but note that these do not cover all subject areas and it is a good idea to search in more specific subject databases.
Please get in touch with the library if you have any questions about finding conference materials in databases.
A multidisciplinary, global citation database covering a broad range of subject areas including the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities. Useful for tracking where, by whom and how often an article has been cited.
Some proceedings may be freely available online. Start by searching the conference website because many organisations provide details of past (and future) conferences here and this may include the full-text of papers. Sometimes you might only find the abstract or presentation slides.
Not sure what conferences might be of interest?
Postgraduate students and academic staff can request items via document delivery. Submit a request if you can't find what you are looking for after searching the Library's resources and the web.
Contact your Liaison Librarian if you have further questions about how to find conference proceedings.
The University Referencing Guide has examples for published conference proceedings and unpublished paper presentations (i.e. collected or viewed at the conference).
The APA Style website has further examples that may be relevant.
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