Publication Formats and Destinations

Types of Publications

There are three primary types of publications in which we’re interested: technical reports, conference papers, and journal articles.

  • Technical reports are publications published through the Georgia Tech library. Anyone can submit anything for publication here. Publications here are not peer-reviewed; thus, this is mostly simply for information dissemination. Technical reports can be of any length and any format. Any papers can be submitted using this form, and we highly recommend doing so!
  • Conference papers are publications submitted to a conference. Submissions go through a peer review process and are either accepted or rejected. If accepted, the author attends the conference and presents the paper. Conference papers are more valuable than technical reports due to the peer review element, and typically range in length from four to ten pages. A good conference paper typically reports on a small number of interesting findings or ideas.
  • Journal articles go through the same process as conference submissions, but rather than presenting the article at a conference, it is instead included in a published journal. Journal articles follow the format of the specific journal, and typically can be significantly longer than conference papers. Although every community is different, they are generally considered more significant than conference papers because they cover a larger scope of work. Very often, multiple conference papers together form the foundation for a journal article; as such, a good journal article reports on a broader range of discoveries or designs.

For the purpose of this class, we are most interested in conference papers: it is unlikely that a single semester of work could generate the information necessary to write a journal article, but we do want to do everything we can do prepare for the peer review process. Therefore, the goal of the final papers in this class is to generate a paper ready for submission to a conference.

Conference Paper Formats

There exist a number of different formats for writing conference papers. In computer science, most conferences follow either the Springer or ACM CHI formats, although some follow their own formats. You should write the paper in the format of the conference most appropriate for your work. The applicable formats are linked in the following table of potentially applicable conferences.

Many conferences have different “tiers” of submissions; for example, many conferences have “full paper” and “short paper” categories. These refer to the length of the paper, and also the rigor expected of the contribution. A “short paper” or “poster” would be expected to make a relatively small contribution, whereas a “full paper” would be expected to make a larger contribution. You may feel free to choose a length most appropriate for the maturity of your work; we would expect that most projects would qualify at least for a short paper. Note that “poster” does not mean you should submit a poster; rather, it means you would submit a short paper, and if invited to present at the conference, you would present using a poster rather than a presentation.

Upcoming Conferences

The following table gives some upcoming conferences. As far as the final paper for this class is concerned, you need only select the conference you think is most applicable to your work and write a paper in its format. Deadlines, locations, and dates are provided just in case you want to make sure to select a conference where publishing is an option.

Conference Name Format Lengths Next Date Next Location Next Submission Deadline Web Site
Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) ACM CHI 10 pages (paper); 4 pages (note) May 7-12, 2016 San Jose, CA, USA September 25, 2015 Link
Learning @ Scale ACM CHI 10 pages (paper); 4 pages (work-in-progress) TBD 2017 Boston, Massachusetts ?? Link
Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference ACM CHI 10 pages (paper); 5 pages (short paper); 2 pages (poster paper) TBD 2017 TBD TBD Link
AI in Education Springer 10 pages (full paper); 4 pages (poster paper) TBD 2017 Philipines TBD Link
Intelligent Tutoring Systems Springer 10 pages (full paper); 3 pages (young researchers track) June 6-10, 2016 Zagreb, Croatia January 27, 2016 Link
International Conference of the Learning Sciences ISLS 8 pages (full); 4 pages (short); 2 pages (poster paper) June 20-24, 2016 Singapore November 20, 2015 Link
Computer Supported Collaborative Learning ISLS 8 pages (full paper); 4 pages (short paper) TBD 2017 Philadelpha, PA, USA TBD Link
Cognitive Science CogSci 6 pages (paper) August 10-13, 2016 Philadelphia, PA, USA TBD Link
Computational Creativity AAAI 8 pages (paper) June 27-July 1, 2016 Paris, France February 27, 2016 Link
Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications IEEE 8 pages (paper); 4 pages (short paper); 2 pages (poster paper) September 7-9, 2016 Barcelona, Spain March 25, 2016 Link
Mobile Learning IADIS 10 pages (paper); 4 pages (short paper); 2 pages (poster paper) TBD 2017 TBD TBD Link
SICSE (Computer Science Education) SIGCSE 6 pages (paper) March 2-5, 2016 Memphis, Tennessee, USA August 28, 2015 Link
Intelligent User Interfaces SIGCHI 10 pages (paper); 4 pages (short paper) March 13-16, 2017 Limassol, Cyprus October 9, 2016 Link

A more complete list of conferences can be found here; note that if your conference is not listed above, it is a good idea to check with your mentor to learn the conference’s notoriety.

Paper Content

For many of your projects, you may not be interested in publishing academically. You might be interested in instead pitching your project to start-up incubators or presenting it to users. The content of the paper is up to you. All papers should have an introduction, conclusion, and project description, but it is up to you whether you want the content of the paper to really qualify it for academic submission. We require you to use the above formats (a) for professionalism, (b) for consistency, and (c) for preparation for potential submission, but if you do not plan to submit your paper to a conference, you may feel free to structure the content differently.

For more details, see the final project’s assignment page.