Submitting same paper to conference and journal

[Joavi]

Is this a bad thing to do? My advisor has told me I should submit the same paper to both a conference and a journal, concurrently. This seems like something that might be accepted, but kind of lame to do. What's the general consensus on this?

[lewin]

Probably field-dependent but in mine, social psych, it's relatively common. For example, I have a paper under review that has a bunch of experiments and I'm presenting a subset of those at an upcoming conference. Speaking for the paranoid, it's unwise to present material at a conference unless it's almost ready to be submitted, or under review, or in press, so that nobody else has time to see your presentation and scoop you. "In press" seems like the sweet spot because you can present the findings and nobody will have read them in the paper yet, then in a few months out it comes! And if submitting something to a conference meant you couldn't submit to a journal later, nobody would attend conferences. If your advisor is sane, he/she will know the norms of the field.

It is tacky, however, to present the same material at multiple conferences. Looks like CV padding.

Edited October 4, 2012 by lewin00

[TakeruK]

I think it's definitely field dependent. In physics and astronomy, one submits an abstract of just a few hundred words, and the conference organizers use that information to decide who gets a talk, a poster, or no presentation at all (usually you'd get at least a poster slot though). Talks are generally short -- as little as 5 minutes for big meetings or as much as ~20 minutes for smaller meetings. Thus, conference presentations are more of a "sneak peek" into what is coming up as well as a quick way to get updated on what your colleagues are working on. If you are really interested in their work, you'd talk to them afterwards or go find the published paper (if it's already out). So, usually, you are presenting some result in-progress, or a recently published paper, or something that is near-complete and about to be published. In the last case, it's also normal to present work-about-to-be-published in order to solicit comments from your peers before submitting it to a journal. Like what lewin00 said, it's best to present these when submission is very close to avoid being scooped!

But I know in computer science, conference proceedings are much more valued (and competitive) than traditional journals. And I've heard that in the social sciences, one might submit the entire paper, not just a short abstract.

Finally, it's not always tacky to present the same material at multiple conferences -- as long as there isn't a large overlap in the attendees. For example, I might present my thesis work at both large, national conferences for all astronomers as well as small conferences for specialists. Of course, the way the material is presented would be different! In addition, if your work crosses two major subfields, you might want to present it at both subfield's major conference/meetings. But either way, to avoid looking like CV padding for those who view my CV, I wouldn't repeatedly mention the same work -- just title it "Selected Presentations" or something and only show the most prestigious conference presentation.

[fluttering]

It depends on whether the conference will publish proceedings (i.e., full 6-8 page papers, not just an abstract). If yes, then you shouldn't submit the same material to a journal. Plenty of researchers do/did this, especially when it was harder to track down conference papers - so the work in the conference paper and journal paper would be identical. Now it's much more likely that a journal will catch you doing this and reject your submission, so people tend to put preliminary analyses or a subset of the analyses in the conference paper and save the full details for the journal paper, so there is still sufficient originality.

If the conference is only publishing abstracts, or is not publishing anything at all, then go for it.