Conferences Conference papers can be difficult to find but they are valuable because they describe cutting-edge research.  This session will enable you to find out about forthcoming conferences and also to locate the published papers of proceedings which have taken place. 

Roger Mills

WISER Science

• Discuss topics of interest to you with a group of like-minded peers

• Get ideas about practice elsewhere • Track latest developments in your field• Present research papers and get feedback / peer review• Develop a network of contacts• Visit interesting places!

Conferences allow you to:

Papers• Papers: presented by individuals at a

conference/meeting/symposium• May be invited or voluntary: invited papers generally more

reliable• Often cover current research in progress, or review state-

of-the-art• Not peer-reviewed, but aimed at peers: so good to have

record of discussion in proceedings

Proceedings• Proceedings are collections of these papers• May be produced before the event (preprints)• May include full papers or just abstracts• May be published

• Under title of conference, or different title• By organising or hosting institution, or commercial

publisher, or individual• In a journal or book or monographic series• As a complete or partial record• On paper or in electronic form or both

Use them to:• Discover current research, described by the researcher • Locate people and organizations actively involved in the

topic• Identify best practice and innovations

Finding proceedings• Often difficult because of variety of ways of publishing• May be no Proceedings, but selected papers published

seprately• No comprehensive listing• Check:

• Library catalogues• Organisation’s websites• Conference databases• Subject databases• People who went

Also try …• Google / Scholar

• Ads in key journals.

• Mailing lists (jiscmail.ac.uk good starting point)

• Brochures, mailshots and Department notice-boards

• http://www.allconferences.com

• Search Library catalogue for proceedings of conferences – will suggest relevant organisations to track down for the future

• Organisational web-sites

• Ask your subject librarian and look out for library subject guides

Locating conference papers

• If you are given a reference to a conference paper that doesn’t mean it was necessarily published!

• Recent papers might be on web – try searching on the paper title, author, organisation name or the conference name

• Sometimes you can quite easily track down the author and they will send you a copy

• If conference papers are not available in Oxford the Library Services can usually get hold of it for you through inter-library loan

OLIS• Proceedings are not categorised separately• Most will have a Library of Congress Subject Heading

including ‘Congresses’• So best to search for keyword(s) in titles and subjects, and

for Congresses in LC Subjects, e.g:

Searching library holdings in Oxford University

• When searching OLIS for a conference paper you need to search for the proceedings of the conference rather than the specific paper

• Conferences are treated as corporate authors

• Published proceedings may have different title to the original

• Publisher may be different from conference organiser

• Use tw= for words in title if a straight title search is fruitless

• OLIS has no option to limit by document type so you need to use keyword search and include ‘proceedings’ ‘conference’, ‘symposi*’ etc as keywords alongside subject terms

Other Library catalogues• See OXLIP under Worldwide Library Catalogues• Especially useful for UK is COPAC or British Library

Catalogue• You can ask for Inter-library loan of identified conferences

British Library• The British Library integrated catalogue includes over

400,000 conference proceedings on a variety of subjects

• Go to the British Library integrated catalogue home page • Choose "Search the integrated catalogue" • Click “Catalogue subset search” from the top bar • Then choose “Document Supply Conferences” from the list.

Conferences at the British Library

• The British Library catalogue can be searched at catalogue.bl.uk/ and catalogue subset search allows you to limit to conference proceedings

• The ZETOC service – http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/ provides access to the British Library's Electronic Table of Contents (ETOC). The database contains details of approximately 20,000 current journals and 16,000 conference proceedings published per year. With almost 15 million article and conference records, the database covers every imaginable subject in science, technology, medicine, engineering, business, law, finance and the humanities. The database covers the years from 1993 to date and is updated daily. Copies of all the articles and conference papers listed on the database are available from the British Library's Document Supply Centre in Yorkshire.

To take advantage of the ZETOC Alerts service you will need an Athens personal username and password

Google & Google Scholar• Use Google for locating announcements of forthcoming

conferences• No controlled vocabulary, so search for ‘conference’ and

also synonyms – meeting, symposium, congress etc• Prefer Google Scholar for conference papers• Note however Google does not explain how sites are

selected as ‘scholarly’ and journal articles are generally only included where Google has an agreement with the publisher

Conference indexes• ISTP – Index of Science and Technology Proceedings –

available through Web of Knowledge• Conference Papers Index – available through CSA• PapersFirst and ProceedingsFirst – available through

OCLC FirstSearch• Find all these on OxLIP

Proceedings [OCLC]• Covers every published congress, symposium, conference, exposition,

workshop and meeting received by The British Library Document Supply Centre.

• Contains in each record a list of the papers presented at each conference. • Subjects: conference proceedings, meetings, congresses, symposia,

exhibitions, workshops• Sources Included in each record.• Number of records 169,000+• Dates covered1993 to present• UpdatedSemiweekly (twice a week)• Available through OXLIP – see

http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/oxlip/index.html and search title index or under general bibliographic tools

PapersFirst• OCLC index of papers presented at conferences worldwide• Covers every published congress, symposium, conference, exposition,

workshop and meeting received by The British Library Document Supply Centre.

• Database details • SubjectsThe wide variety of subjects discussed at the covered meetings.• Sources Included in each record.• Number of recordsOver 5,700,000• Dates covered1993 to present• Updated Semimonthly (twice a month)• Available through OXLIP – see http://

www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/oxlip/index.html and search title index or under general bibliographic tools

ISI Index to Scientific and Technical Proceedings (1990-) (Web of Knowledge Proceedings)

• ISTP indexes the published literature of the most significant

conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions in a wide range of disciplines in science and technology.

• ISTP covers only publications in which the proceedings are published for the first time, and only those which contain complete papers, not just abstracts.

• Coverage includes international proceedings, and is not limited to those in the English language.

• Published proceedings may be included from a number of sources; books or series produced by publishers or societies, reports, sets of preprints (when preprints are the only publications from a conference) or journals.

• More than 1100 conferences are added with each quarterly update, guaranteeing access to current research from the most significant conference literature in science and technology.

Conference Papers Index (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts)

Conference Papers provides citations to papers and poster sessions presented at major scientific meetings around the world.

• Subject emphasis since 1995 has been in the life sciences, environmental sciences and the aquatic sciences, while older material also covers physics, engineering and materials science.

• Information is derived from final programs, abstracts booklets and published proceedings, as well as from questionnaire responses.

• Records include complete ordering information to obtain preprints, abstracts, proceedings and other publications derived from the conference, together with title and author information needed to track the specific papers.

• Available through OxLIP

Local holdings• Note TOUR limitations – modify search

Subject-specific databases• Most subject-specific bibliographic databases include

conference papers and proceedings• Find those relevant to your subject via OxLIP

Subject databasesYou can check subject and general databases (via OxLIP)

for options to limit by conference as document type eg:

Biological Abstracts

Sociological Abstracts

SIGLE : System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe

SciFinder Scholar (Chemical Abstracts)

Engineering Index – Compendex

Web of Science

INSPEC (for physics)

Gateways• Gateways are catalogues of evaluated websites• Good for finding institutions relevant to your subject• And for major world congresses that spawn many

documents and sub-committees• E.g. Intute, DOPP, MiND

Repositories• Institutional and subject-based repositories being

developed• Oxford: FENIX• Search them via

Newspapers• Often report on major conferences, usually while being

held• Frequently do not give any indication of where proceedings

/ website can be found• Search newspapers through LexisNexis Global Business

and News Service, available on OxLIP• Worldwide coverage, in English and some European

languages

Mailing Lists• Mailing lists• RSS feeds• Personal contacts

RSS Feeds

Personal contacts

Quoting• Be consistent and follow a standard system, e..g.

Harvard, when referring to papers or proceedings.• Give as much detail as possible – remember how much

trouble you had finding it! An accurate reference will help others.

• Generally include:• Author(s) of paper - surname and initials Year of

publication, 'Title of paper - in single quotation marks' [in] Editor (if applicable), Title of published proceeding which may include place held and date(s) - italicised, Publisher, Place of publication, Page numbers.

To summarise• Identify relevant organisations and mailing lists for information

on upcoming conferences

• Many papers are available online

• Search library catalogues for print holdings

• Use Inter-library loan service for printed items not held locally

• There are specific databases for conference proceedings

• Many general or subject indexing databases allow you to search for conference proceedings

• Your subject librarian is always ready to help - see http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/collections/librarians

Exercise• Try searching for conferences held by these organisations:

• International Union of Forest research Organizations• British Ecological Society

• Or on these topics:• Bird flu• The Information Society