Hi Not a typical CFD question. I have quite a few publications in AIAA conferences. Do they have any weightage as comapred to a journal publication? I know that conference proceeding have no impact factor but need a concrete proof that conference publications are worth nothing (not talking about the advantages of participating in a conference)???? Any ideas. Thanx Anon

From what I heard from people/observed in my place, the conference publications carry little/no weight. It may be different in different institutions I guess...

I agree. The reason being that publications at conferences generally go through little if any peer review. Usually it is only the abstract that is reviewed. I have personally seen a lot of garbage presented at conferences.

There are exceptions to this of course. International Meshing Roundtable comes to mind. There the entire final paper must be submitted for consideration and review.

I think it depends heavily on how frequently these conference papers are referenced... although I agree that without knowing how specific conf. works are treated in your specific field, the general perception is that journal papers are more important than conference papers… but for the people in your specific field, they may treasure certain conference papers more so than the overall journal publications… so it is not a straight forward anser…

Also APS "conference papers" seem to carry more weight in perception than aiaa conference papers… so it is also true that not all conference papers are perceived the same.

some of the classical literatures are nothing more than conference papers... but if they are referenced often, then it carries more weight in the minds of experts more so than journal papers that were published but either never or seldom referenced... examples... the original reference to the Baldwin-Lomax turbulence model as far as i can remember, was an aiaa paper only... but it is now considered as a classic... that is perhaps the most famous example although i off hand can name three or four more examples... but again, i think much of it depends on how the community uses your results... a lot of journal publications were never used or referenced... not sure in the overall scheme of things, never referenced journal publications are worth more than frequently referenced conference papers... but the people that will evaluate your promotion or your resume may think otherwise.

on a related note... full journal papers vs. quick technical notes... the article that described the double helix structure of DNA, which i think is one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century, was in the AIAA framework, a technical note... a bit over two pages... but that quick note changed the course of modern life science.

"the article that described the double helix structure of DNA, which i think is one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century, was in the AIAA framework, a technical note..."

If you mean this paper http://journals.royalsociety.org/con...c5a59b456ecbb6π=1

that's a rather bad example! I thinl Prandtl's boundary layer theory would have been a rather more apt choice.

Personally I never include conference proceedings in my list of publications and tend to ignore such publications when listed on peoples CV's.

Well, thanx for the answers. I guess that confrence publications are not that bad and if the conference is numbered, it has proceedings and peer reviewed; then it should be considered as a valid publication (and therefore part of resume). If it has no academic value, then why waste time and effort to prepare and answer questions etc. No doubt journal publication goes through more scrutiny, but it is highly dependent on the couple of reviewers; who at times can be biased. In short, conference offers a researcher to show the research work in a short time while for the same research to appear in a journal, one has to wait for atleast one year. Coming to the specifics, CFD journals are few in number and their impact factor is quite low as compared to basic sciences, electronics etc; so it creates a huge disparity while comparing research output of professors within a university. So how do we go around this problem???? Maybe AIAA rep can shed some light on status/standing of AIAA conference publication. Bye

in my experience, the conference papers are the beginning of the journal article. Getting an article published in a journal is rather taxing..you go thru numerous edits, and you are trying appease 4 different people, and some times it gets out of control.

here is an online CFD journal you can submit papers to.

http://www.cse.polyu.edu.hk/publication/jeacfm/

one very nice advantage to conference papers is that you (in most cases) have to present the paper at the conference. And, if you do everything correctly you usually get to go to a pretty neat place. This is a great warm-up for thesis/dissertation defense and lets you answer questions and practice your presentation skills.

But some conferences are much more recognised in some fields than journal papers. For example the papers presented in SAE conference (Society of Automotive Engineers, takes place every year in Detroit), are considered to be very trustful and recognised in comparison to journal papers dealing with automotive applications. Therefore everyone cares to send a paper in this particular conference instead to one journal, even if the journal has a high impact factor etc.

But again this is just one exception.

Refereed journals are clearly the standard. But conference papers have merit. Unfortunately conference papers have a wide range of quality. Some institutions, such as NASA, require an internal review before any publication is let out. So, those papers are usually good. The AIAA philosophy is that the question and answer period serves as a de-facto review of the paper. An author should take those comments to heart and use the feedback if he/she chooses to submit to a journal.