TWRT 211: Finding Conference Proceedings: Home
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This guide is aimed at students in TWRT 211 at the University of Washington, Tacoma, who are exploring the genre of conference proceedings. Please contact us if you have questions
What are Conference Proceedings?
The published record of a conference (or congress, or symposium, or other meeting) is called a conference proceeding It usually but not always includes abstracts or reports of papers presented by the participants.
Why are conference proceedings useful?
Conference proceedings can be super helpful to you in learning about your discipline.
- Forefront of Research: Often, conference proceedings are published much more quickly than journal articles or books.This means you are aware of what's happening in your field prior to journal publication. Often, people present new ideas at conferences.
- Who's who in your Field: By looking at conference proceedings, you can see who is doing cutting edge research in your area of interest. Then, you can easily check out what these people have already published to learn more about your topic.
- Informality: While it greatly depends on the discipline, conference presentations can be a bit more informal as people explore new ideas. The exception here is in the engineering and computer science fields, where conference proceedings carry as much value as peer-reviewed publications do elsewhere.
