How to choose a conference?
Keynote speakers, invited speakers, contributor and poster presenters
Firstly, prior to submitting an abstract, it is important to ensure the conference you are planning to present your research will publish conference proceedings.
Publishing includes electronic copies issued to conference attendees, audio versions of the paper given for sale at the time of the conference, and versions submitted to journals.
State, national and international opportunities are identified by faculty, topic and timing.
Where to find conferences in your field?
Social media
Facebook (Facebook events Page), Twitter (hashtag), Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and SnapChat
Professional organisations/institutions
Conference listing websites
LISTSERVE
Conference databases
Recognising the characteristics. How to choose?
Conference characteristics include:
the prestigious level of the conference
research quality
members of the conference committee (for direction and guidance)
diversity in the field (presentation statement relevance to the conference)
interesting engagement of focus
national or international audience opportunity.
How many presentations are accepted for publishing?
Approximately 44.5 % of abstracts presented at national meetings were subsequently published in indexed journals (Sawatsky et al., 2015).
A range of 55–63% of abstracts presented at biomedical conferences have been published in full (Amarilyo et al., 2013).
Interacting with others
Meeting others with interest in research can help with making decisions in career goals and objectives. Interactions with others enable sharing of information between delegates worldwide.
Twitter has been recognised as a very powerful tool amplifying the content of scientific meetings.
It enables a wider engagement of discussions and dissemination of information. Twitter can be used for collaboration with others, career planning, searching for work, and enabling presentable self-promoting.
Over a 3-year period (2012 and 2014), there was a rise in participant Twitter activity for the European Association of Urology Annual Congress, the number of participants increased almost 10-fold (Wilkinson, Basto, Perovic, Lawrentschuk & Murphy, 2015).
Free software tools available to help you simultweet include:
-PowerPoint AutoTweet
-Keynotetweet.
Suggested Reading
References
Amarilyo, G., Woo, J. M., Furst, D. E., Hoffman O. L., Eyal, R., Piao, C., Parker, D. S. & McCurdy, D. K. (2013). Publication outcomes of abstracts presented at an American College of Rheumatology/Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals Annual Scientific Meeting. Arthritis Care Research, 65(4), 622-629. doi:10.1002/acr.21864.
Sawatsky, A. P., Beckman, T. J., Varayil, J. E., Mandrekar, J. N., Reed, D. A., & Wang, A. T. (2015). Association between study quality and publication rates of medical education abstracts presented at the Society of General Internal Medicine Annual Meeting. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 30(8), 1172–1177. doi:10.1007/s11606-015-3269-7
Wilkinson, S. E., Marnique, Y., Basto, M. Y., Lawrentschuk, G. P. N., & Murphy, D. G. (2015). The social media revolution is changing the conference experience: Analytics and trends from eight international meetings. British Journal of Urology, 115(5), 839–846. doi:10.1111/bju.12910
