Reexamining the Role of Conference Papers in Scholarly Communication

In the most widely accepted model of the growth of scientific literature, papers presented at conferences are seen as precursors leading to the creation of journal articles. A sample of papers presented at an annual meeting of the American Society for Information Science led to journal articles at a rate much lower than would be expected from studies of other disciplines. On the other hand, a sample of articles from the Journal of the America/ Society for Information Science had rates of follow-up publication similar to values reported in the literature. This suggests that it is not the case that information science as a discipline has different publication patterns from other scholarly areas. A more complex model of the growth of scientific literature is proposed. Among the features of this model are recognition that many new findings can be conveyed with relatively small amounts of information. A view that in complex systems novelty may not be as important as generalizability. And the emergence of new forms of dissemination including electronic communication, self-publishing, and “group monographs.”