Introduction
Presenting research papers at conferences is an excellent way to share novel findings from your research and connect with other researchers, who would be interested and impressed by your work.
The conference organizers and the researchers demand unpublished research papers be presented. The main reason for this demand is the fact that every author with his new idea will get a chance to present his work and disseminate new knowledge to the researchers.
It is also a known fact that many a time as an author you might be tempted to submit your research paper knowingly or unknowingly to multiple conferences without much bothering about the future consequences.
This multiple submission of a research paper may happen from you due to; PhD research deadlines; unable to identify the quality of the conference; or low confidence regarding selection. However, as per research community guidelines, it is unethical to send the same paper to two different conferences.
The problem with every researcher is how to overcome the problem of multiple submissions of a research paper but still can apply to more than one conference. Let us think of a mid path which can solve your problem. This blog post will try to explore the possibility of sending the same paper to two different conferences by finding a mid path to avoid future legal implications including plagiarism penalties.
You can refer my article on The Consequences of Plagiarism: What You Need to Know?, This post will help you understand consequences of plagiarism and how to avoid it.
What is Pressurising you to Submit a Research Paper to Multiple Conferences?
Academic or Ph.D. Deadlines
You may be in a hurry to get at least one research paper get published at one conference. This may be badly required to fulfill your academic requirement. You do not want to take risk of losing out due to relying on only one conference. So you might have hesitantly applied for more than one conference without the consent of your supervisor.
Unable to Identify the Quality of the Conference
Many times, while submitting a research paper for any conference as an author you may not be aware of the quality of the conference to which you want to send the paper. Many conferences add panel speakers and tie up with other journals at later dates. Some conferences announce the database to which these research papers will be put after acceptance of papers. This will lead to confusion for many authors while making decisions about the conference. I suggest the reader to go through one of my articles on Avoiding Predatory Conferences and Journals: A Step by Step Guide for Researchers. This article will help you to avoid predatory conferences.
Low Confidence Regarding Selection of the Research Paper
Conferences always will have a main theme and tracks. Each track will represent one subdomain of the main theme. There are possibilities that your research paper may give a thin match to the main theme or one of the subdomains under consideration. This will make you less confident regarding the acceptance of your paper.
Limitations on the Number of Papers to be Selected for the Domain or Track
Every conference has limitations on the number of research papers to be selected. This may be due to time, space or budget limitations. There can be a possibility that the conference proceedings may be tied to a journal which may have limitations on the number of papers to be published in journals.
Finding a Midpath for Applying for more than one conference
Changing the Focus Keyword of the Research Paper
Each research paper will have a focus keyword around which the entire content of the paper revolves. While applying for multiple conferences, change the keyword and change the focus of the paper to that keyword. This will free the paper from multiple submissions. The example below illustrates this point.
Title: Leaf Disease Feature Identification and Extraction Using Deep Neural Network
Focus keyword: Leaf Disease Feature Identification and Extraction
New Title: Recognition and Quantification of the Areal Space Occupied by the Leaf Disease Features Using Deep Neural Network
Focus keyword: Quantification of Areal Space Occupied by Leaf Disease
Changing the Theme of the Research Paper as per the Conference Theme
Every conference will have a conference theme. Many times conference organizers accept research papers which are aligned with the theme of the paper. The authors can tweak the title and content of the paper as per the theme of the conference.
Conference Theme: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Title: Machine Learning Approach for Leaf Disease Feature Identification and Extraction
Conference Theme: Data Analytics
Title: Performance Analysis of Deep Neural Network for Leaf Disease Feature Extraction
Changing the Algorithm used for Implementation
The authors can find many algorithms which are competent and exhibit similar properties. By changing the algorithm the authors will get the benefit of applying for multiple conferences.
Title: Leaf Disease Feature Identification and Extraction Using Recurrent Neural Network
Title: Leaf Disease Feature Identification and Extraction Using Convolutional Neural Network
Converting your Research Paper to a Comparative Analysis Paper
Some research papers may have multiple algorithms for implementations or sometimes the author can add one or two algorithms to the existing implementation and can carry out a comparative analysis of the algorithms.
Title: Leaf Disease Feature Identification and Extraction Using Recurrent Neural Network
Title: Comparative Analysis of Deep Neural Network Algorithms on Leaf Disease Feature Identification and Extraction
Submitting the same abstract to multiple conferences is generally not recommended and is often against the policies of academic conferences. Most conferences require original work that has not been previously presented or published elsewhere. Submitting the same abstract to multiple conferences simultaneously can be considered unethical because it may lead to duplicate publications or presentations, which can undermine the integrity of the academic community.
Can I Submit the Same Abstract to Multiple Conferences?
Submitting the same abstract to multiple conferences is generally not recommended and is often against the policies of academic conferences. Most conferences require original work that has not been previously presented or published elsewhere. Submitting the same abstract to multiple conferences simultaneously can be considered unethical because it may lead to duplicate publications or presentations, which can undermine the integrity of the academic community.
Here are some reasons why submitting the same abstract to multiple conferences is discouraged:
- Ethical Considerations: Academic integrity requires researchers to be honest and transparent about their work. Submitting the same abstract to multiple conferences without disclosing this fact can be seen as a violation of ethical standards.
- Duplicate Publication: If the same research is presented at multiple conferences, it may lead to duplicate publications, which are generally not accepted by academic journals or conference organizers. This can result in wasted resources and potential confusion in the academic community.
- Conflicting Commitments: If your abstract is accepted by more than one conference, you may find yourself in a situation where you are unable to fulfil your obligations to all of them. This can cause inconvenience to conference organizers and other participants.
Instead of submitting the same abstract to multiple conferences, it’s better to carefully select the most relevant conference for your research and submit your abstract exclusively to that conference. If your abstract is not accepted, you can consider revising it and submitting it to a different conference in the future. Additionally, if you have multiple related research projects, you can develop separate abstracts for each project and submit them to different conferences as appropriate.
Conclusion
Submitting a research paper to multiple conferences is legally and ethically not a good idea. The author will be forced to withdraw his/her paper from other conferences once his work gets selected for one of the conferences.
However many authors are tempted to submit research papers to multiple conferences due to hard deadlines, non-clarity of the quality of the conference etc. In such situations, one can find a mid path where the author can keep multiple conferences with a little tweak in the structure, organization and theme of the research paper.
However, my suggestion to the authors is to do this tweaking in such a way that it should not be just a paraphrasing of words but a moderate change in the concept of the paper.
