Reassessing Conference Goals and Outcomes: A Defense of Presenting Similar Papers at Multiple Conferences

Extract

As Nelson Dometrius's opening essay suggests, academic standards, like other occupational standards and practices, change over time. These changes may draw fire from both established and younger scholars trained in the classical tradition. Shifting norms in political science range from different publication standards over time (few would doubt that the number of publications required for tenure has increased in most schools), to changing ideas about journal quality, to different conference practices. In this essay, I argue that the increasingly common practice of presenting identical papers at multiple conferences is not a negative influence on the discipline and does not conflict with any of the commonly offered rationales for conference attendance and participation. In fact, I suggest that making changes to existing papers—presenting future versions of a paper—may produce a more focused research agenda and may battle some potentially negative trends in political science. I also argue that this practice is a rational and predictable outgrowth of the shifting academic incentive structure.Thanks to Nelson Dometrius, Todd Collins, Gibbs Knotts, and Niall Michelsen for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.