I have a deadline for a conference abstract for wednesday. Problem is the conference want a 500 abstract and then in May want a full paper, which they will then publish in their journal if you're accepted. My problems with this are

a) the paper my sup asked me to submit isn't ready, I haven't even done the results yet - can I still enter it? I've done this for a postgrad conference before, but saying "its not finished yet" seems a bit poor.

b) the journal it could potentially get published in isn't great - although I would like to present at the conference, I'm not totally sure if I want the paper in the journal, although it would be an 'easy' publicatoin if accepted.

so confused!

Hi Sneaks,

personally I like to finish the whole paper before submitting to any journal, yet I know it is common practice to send an abstract to a conference although not everything is ready yet.

If you like to present at the conference and the journal is OK, it would just send it and then finalise after the conference.

If you feel strongly you do not want it in their paper, I would also not send it to the conference, to avoid all kind of conflicts of interest.

:-)

hi sneaks
guess what moonblue sent me the paper I needed!!! I love this forum and everyone in it!

a) you can still enter it if you want; you just have to be careful how to write the abstract. But I find 500 words quite a lot to write if you dont have results, it might be difficult.

b) if you're not sure yet, maybe you can wait a bit

I would wait a bit (means I wont send in the abstract). Like rick i prefer to have a full paper first, or at least three-quarters of a paper (with some results).

Anyway you still have until wednesday to decide :-)
love satchi

I don't know what you field is but in mine (Geography - social science end - and tourism) it is fairly normal to write an abstract before you have even done the research - in fact my head of department told me that there is an art in writing enough detail that you get accepted but not enough that you are stuck with a topic if you want to change it.
I generally write abstracts and if accepted write the presentation and/or the paper.  If you think that the journal is too good for your paper then can you present it as work in progress and then submit to another journal when it is finished?

That's what I'm thinking, BUT its the only conference to be held in my area i.e. my area of psychology on my specific subject, like EVER and it won't be repeated. I think I should be presenting because I want to be seen as one of the lead researchers in this area. But as I say, not having results is an issue. Plus, to get results i need to do about 100 hours of qualitative analysis which is not doable by wednesday.

I have written abstracts similar to this i.e. lots of intro, method, results pending and implications of potential results to the wider field.

I guess I've decided I would like to submit something.....maybe another study which I have stats for?

Hi Sneaks

I'd go for it - I think easy publications should be snaffled up. It's hard getting published, so if there's an easy way to do it, great. Using results you already have sounds like a good idea, but if you haven't got results, I'd still publish and outline the research questions, issues etc, and then this can point to future work you'll be doing. In a way this could even be better, if you use this publication to get the initial ideas out there, and then publish full results in a more prestigious journal. Good luck!

Thanks for the advice.

I frantically put an abstract together this morning and submitted it. If it is successful, they want the full paper by August, so that is plenty of time to put together the paper - I will be writing it up for publication anyway, so it will either go to them or a journal I choose.

I feel better that I did submit, in that I didn't have anything to lose - if I don't get accepted then no one will know!

However, I daren't show my supervisor what I did submit because I think it was pretty poor! Just wait and see I guess.