I had my first go recently at submitting a paper to a graduate conference. Around a week before the conference, they had not contacted me to say whether my submission was successful or not, and when I emailed the graduate student organising the conference to enquire he failed to get back to me. I found, by checking the conference website repeatedly, that I was not successful when they posted the speaker list, less than a week before the conference.

It strikes me as rather rude of the conference organisers not to tell people who were unsuccessful and to merely post the list of speakers online just a few days before the conference. Am I entitled to be irked, or is this a normal way of doing things?

Hello Dcmtr,

Are you sure that you submitted your proposal by the deadline? Deadlines for submission of abstracts are usually several months before a conference.
It is a bit strange that they accepted papers just a week before the conference. If it was a postgraduate conference, it might just be that the organisers weren't very experienced.

Generally deadlines for submissions should be clearly stated in the call for papers, and no proposal is accepted after that. Depending on the scale of the conference the acceptance (or rejection) message may be sent to the applicants after a few weeks or a couple of months, but also this is generally stated in the call for papers.

But if this conference was just poorly organised it might be better not to take part in it!

Good luck for your next submission!

Hi DrCorinne, thanks for your reply, I definitely submitted it on time (the deadline was one month before) and received acknowledgement. They just failed to inform me whether or not I had been accepted. I take it I am right that unsuccessful authors would usually be informed then - I guess it was a little badly organised.

That's poor show. Less than one week's notice of the speakers?! Maybe it's a blessing in disguise that you didn't get to present; who knows what else they forgot to do ;-)

Well said Lughna!