It's the time of year again when CFPs for conferences are flooding my inbox. But, I need of bit of advice regarding conference etiquette. Under what circumstances is it acceptable to deliver the same paper at multiple conferences?
FYI: I'm a graduate student and my work is of an interdisciplinary sort. I try to attend a variety of conferences -- local and national; graduate-run and otherwise. There are, thus, potentially quite a few opportunities for me to give the same presentation (with a changed title for the sake of ye olde CV) and be very unlikely to encounter any overlap in attendees. I don't have time at this point in my program to produce much new research and writing, but I do have a collection of high-quality papers written for courses, some of which have already received good receptions at conferences -- I'm just wondering how much I can squeeze out of the best ones, at least prior to acceptance for publication, and not run afoul of respectable academic practice?
I'd say it's less a matter of "respectable practice" than it is of making good use of your time. Chances are that time would be better spent working up your papers into articles. If you have time to go to conferences, chances are you have time to work up an essay. My two cents.
ReplyDeleteIf you can afford to travel to conferences, they can be a lot of fun. Otherwise, as Lex says, publish. Don't spend your rent on conferences, seriously.
ReplyDeleteThat said, you don't deliver the same paper at different conferences. You deliver a similar paper with different (very different) names. At least that's what you SHOULD do, if you are going to cite them on your c.v. Or, don't cite them at all because hiring committees can smell padding a mile away.
I wish I could have afforded to go to a bunch of conferences as a grad student. As a prof I can't really afford any, unless my university pays. And they'll only pay for one a year. Even a local conference costs hundreds what with the extortion-level registration rates.
Like I said, DON'T spend the rent money to go, or go into any debt to go. Publishing is free.
I was going to say something along the lines of Lex. You could probably get away with it, but it would be so much better for your own development if you could view it from different angles. Even if you take the same paper, but put one version in terms of gender and another in terms of globalization or something -- you are at least continuing to push yourself instead of running circles around the same topic.
ReplyDeleteBesides, conferences take time and money. Best get the most out of it by running different ideas by people at different times, even if some of your evidence is the same.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIf your paper is really good, conferences will invite you to present it. If that's the case, don't worry about repeat performances: they invited you.
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't been specifically invited to do this, whether it's OK to give the same paper repeatedly depends a lot from field to field. Ask people in your specialty. Whatever the case, it will help enormously if your paper is interesting.
If there is a limit, I'd say present the paper once in a large, general meeting, good for job hunting, and again in a small, specialized meeting, good for learning science, although I always try to improve a paper significantly, any time I'm considering presenting it a second time. To paraphrase Peter Medawar in "Advice to a Young Scientist," on no account continue with your Ph.D. work for the remainder of your life.
I would disagree with what other people have said here, because you say your work is interdisciplinary. Ideally you want feedback from people in all the different disciplines your work encompasses, and conferences are a fantastic way to do this, as well as to quickly get a handle on the most important current issues in each field.
ReplyDeleteI think it's very worthwhile to give two or three papers based on the same work so that you cover all your bases. For instance, if you are working on a project that has a finger in each of the pies of anthropology, linguistics, and neuroscience, you go to the major conference for each of those disciplines and see what they think of your paper.
In my pre-academia life that was called MIRVing—reusing the same data and work for different projects. I’ve done it a bit on papers but with a few rules in mind.
ReplyDelete1. The conferences should be aimed at different audiences.
2. I changed the papers enough to reflect the different audiences. For example, I wrote a long paper on a subject that I intend to be my next book. It could be divided, roughly, into three sections, A, B and C. I used sections A and B at conference 1, and sections B and C at conference #2.
3. I told the panel chairs for each paper what I was doing first and got their approval. I emphasized that the paper I gave for their panel would be tailored for the appropriate audience. Neither chair objected.
I hope that helps…
Oh, gah! Please don't do what RachelH tells you if you're in the humanities. Giving a paper twice is, to quote several of my mentors, "very bad form." Stella and Lex are right.
ReplyDeleteOver-conferring is always a bad idea, especially if you're a graduate student. Go to a maximum of two conferences a year and make them count. Never go to a grad student conference: waste of time. Never go to a conference without giving a paper. Never give the same paper twice. If you over-confer, hiring committees will think a) you're a conference bunny, i.e. someone who's not serious about their work, and is there to suck up, bed-hop, and drink, and b) are wasting your funding.
If you give the same paper twice as a graduate student, you will be thought lazy, and here's why: no matter how hard you're working as a graduate student, faculty think you can't possibly be working as hard as they are, and they still managed to give a different paper. For the most part, they're right about this (though not always), and even if you think they're wrong, remember that they've done both jobs, and you, so far, have only done one. Also remember that it doesn't really matter if they're right or wrong, the only thing that matters is their perception when they're hiring.
People who are allowed to give papers twice fall into one or all of the following categories: they're a) ancient, b) giving an invited talk, c) tenured, d) in a major administrative position. If you're none of these, don't even think about it.
If you need to rationalize this, consider that you are disseminating knowledge - an important part of being a researcher.
ReplyDeleteYou probably have done enough research that you can't present it all in one talk. Break it up into smaller chunks and deliver each to a different audience with minimum overlap of material. This allows you to go to a conferences in different fields and deliver talks with very different titles.
I agree with Cass that grad-only conferences are a waste of time unless that's your only venue.
Cass is also right that hiring committees might think you like to "suck up, bed-hop, and drink." However, depending on the hiring committee, that's not a bug, it's a feature.
Is it possible this is a sciences versus humanities thing? I’m in the social sciences and while I have never given the same talk at two different meetings, I have seen many other people do it. In my field, it seems that it is not generally smiled upon, but isn’t exactly the kiss of death either.
ReplyDeleteI totally disagree with Cass. Some of my most lucrative contacts happened at conferences where I was not presenting AND where everyone was a grad student. There are three elements to getting a job, even in this market: personal ability, opportunity, and NETWORKING. Networking is frequently the missing piece for people who end up as lifelong adjuncts.
ReplyDeleteYou can give two versions of the same paper, espcially if you have rewritten it. I see conference presentations as working sessions to improve the piece before publication. I agree don't go to endless conferences, one or two a year is fine.
ReplyDeleteI suppose there are not many here in the sciences. There are many fields where conference presentations are more valuable than publications; I would recommend you to ask someone in your "interdisciplinary" field regarding their relative value.
ReplyDeleteIn my field, which you might also consider interdisciplinary, it is fairly common to reframe and rewrite papers from a single dataset for multiple conferences/audiences. For example, one piece on the technical aspects for a technical audience, and another piece on the theoretical background for a more social-sciencey audience. But you should never give EXACTLY the same paper - I think most in my field would consider that a sort of academic dishonesty, i.e. transparent vita-bolstering not representing a unique intellectual contribution.
From your nick, I'm assuming you're in some flavor of sociology - if that's the case, taking fewer conferences and writing more for journals is probably a good idea.
Also, make sure if you are crossing fields that what you have to say is actually NEW. The worst paper I ever heard at a history conference was given by a political scientist who clearly had no clue about the historiography of the subject he was discussing. The reviewer ripped him to shreds.
ReplyDelete