Writing for Conferences: A Handbook for Graduate Students and Faculty by Leo Mallette and Clare Berger (review)

In the ever-expanding realm of how-to books on writing for scholarly publishing, few avenues seem to remain unexplored. Imagine my delight, then, upon learning of this pioneering volume by Leo Mallette (an adjunct at Pepperdine University) and doctoral student Clare Berger (also at Pepperdine). Having a background in the humanities and social sciences, I presumed that the book would explore the connection between conference presentations and subsequent publications in scholarly outlets: In many humanities and social science fields, for example, the papers presented at academic conferences are often early drafts of articles-in-the-making. Feedback garnered at conferences is—at least in theory—incorporated into revisions, thus strengthening the resultant journal submissions. But beyond repeatedly making the point that ‘many peer-reviewed journal articles start out as an idea that was presented at a conference’ (54), this book does not traverse the ground I was expecting. Instead, the book is principally about writing for publication at conferences, namely, through the vehicle of conference proceedings.

Therein lies the main oversight of the authors: Readers—particularly members of the target audience of ‘graduate students and young professionals’ (vii) who are still being socialized into professional norms and expectations—might not yet understand the roles of conferences and conference proceedings within their fields. More consequentially, readers might not understand the potential ramifications of such publishing activity on their future careers. In the humanities, for example, Wendy Belcher warns that ‘Getting your work published in conference proceedings . . . is a frequent error of younger scholars’¹: They fail to realize that such work may not ‘count’ as refereed publications. Mallette and Berger do in fact acknowledge that conference presentations and published conference proceedings are not included in the same category as peer-reviewed journal publications by members of the ‘academic community’ (38); but they should have included a much more thorough overview of the types of fields wherein publishing in conference proceedings is the norm. My informal poll of colleagues across a wide swath of disciplines suggests that students and faculty members in healthcare and STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) stand to benefit more than researchers in the humanities and social sciences from publication in conference proceedings. But this book does not seem targeted toward such individuals. Rather, the presumption of general applicability of the advice to any students and young professionals—and even ‘anyone who aspires to publish, whether it is in a newsletter for your collectibles, a local newspaper, a gardening magazine, or a professional journal’ (xi)—weakens the credibility of the presentation. Conferences and conference proceedings may be ubiquitous across academic fields, but their usefulness and perceived worth vary dramatically.

Although the execution is unsuccessful due to superficiality and the omission of key foundational material, the premise of this work is sound: Publishing in conference proceedings offers a relatively quick way for graduate students and faculty members to disseminate research findings, at least on the scope and scale of the conferences themselves. (The matter of whether such individuals should be aspiring to disseminate their work in such a manner, though, is an important component of this discussion that should not have been ignored.) Built primarily around anecdotal material, the sixteen short chapters (averaging twelve pages each) are organized into four sections: ‘Introduction to Publishing at Conferences,’ ‘Finding the Right Conference,’ ‘My First Steps’ (not, in fact, a section on toddler-rearing), and ‘The Paper, Presentation, and Networking.’ The first section is where Mallette and Berger could have offered a thorough discussion of the roles and types of conference proceedings within the ‘publishing landscape’ (xii) and their prevalence in certain fields and disciplines. The value (or lack thereof) of publishing in conference proceedings is given cursory treatment.² The second section has too little to say about the quality of possible conferences. With respect to conference...