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Academic conferences

Attending conferences is a useful method of staying current and it is invaluable for networking with colleagues in your research field. An academic conference is a meeting for researchers (not per definition academic), in a particular discipline or on a particular subject, during which recent research results can be presented and discussed. Conferences are, together with academic journals, one of the most important forms of scholarly interaction and exchange of ideas and contacts.

Although this may vary from conference to conference, most conferences include one or more keynote speakers, regular presentations, workshops and poster sessions. The papers of the presentations usually are bundled into conference proceedings and published after the conference.

General information on Academic conferences:

Several databases include (citations of) conference proceedings in their contents. Examples of these are:

  • Web of Science (choose: Conference Proceedings Citation Index, or refine by: ‘document type’)
  • ABI/Inform Global (go to: ‘more search options’ -> ‘document type’ -> ‘conference proceedings’)
  • The UL catalogue (pick: ‘conference’ in the second selection box).


A very effective tool to effectively search for conference proceedings is the ‘Show with this format’ tool in the ‘advanced search options’ in the EUR search engine sEURch.