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May 20
Double Dipping in Conference Papers
If you are going to give a talk at a scholarly meeting, do you need new material?
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That’s the question being debated in political science — as evidenced by a series of articles in the new edition of the journal PS: Political Science and Politics. While the journal finds a range of views on whether the trend is understandable or regrettable, the authors agree that it is real, and that attitudes appear generational.
As Nelson C. Dometrius, a professor of political science at Texas Tech University, writes in his introduction to the journal’s debate, when he raised the question with senior faculty members, he received mixed reactions, with people quickly outlining special cases where they viewed such “double dipping” as justified. When he posed the same question to graduate students, Dometrius relates, “the modal reply was a blank stare — a lack of comprehension that presenting the same paper as many times as you wished would be viewed by anyone as an unusual or questionable practice.”
Many senior faculty members say they first were discouraged from the practice in grad school — as often through subtle instruction as through any formal list of rules. In the PS articles, scholars consider the question of whether this shift in attitudes is one to fight or accept. Why, Dometrius wonders, is it now acceptable to do what was once “bad form"? (Via e-mail, he said that while he hasn’t rechecked every paper he has given, he does not believe he has ever double dipped.)
While noting that the practice has become visible largely when reviewing job applications, Dometrius wanted to quantify it, so he assembled 114 vitas from political science departments at seven regional universities. The pool was made up of 87 faculty members and 27 graduate students, and departmental or institution-specific conferences were excluded, so the focus was only on conferences to which scholars regionally or nationally might apply to present or would travel to attend. He counted as “double” any paper with the same title or substantially the same title (although he notes from experiences that some who may be more ashamed of the practice try to hide it with substantially different titles for the same paper, so he may be undercounting).
In his sample, he found not a single case of double presentations prior to 1992. Then in the mid-1990s, he finds a paper or two a year, and by this decade it becomes fairly common — even if there is still a ton of new material out there. While double presentations are pretty much a non-factor for those who earned Ph.D.’s through 1985, the attitude is quite different now.
Consider the following table showing double presentations by year doctorate was received. (The numbers for the most recent group may appear low, but that is primarily because these scholars have had less time to make presentations of any kind, let alone doubles, and the percentage suggests that their figures will rise considerably.)
Duplicate Presentations, by Year Doctorate Received
|
Year of Doctorate |
% Who Have Double Dipped |
Duplicates as % of All Papers Presented |
|
1960-1985 |
14.8% |
0.5% |
|
1986-1995 |
46.7% |
4.1% |
|
1996-2005 |
52.6% |
6.7% |
|
2006-present |
25.9% |
7.4% |
The traditional reason given for double presentations — getting feedback and then revising — remains a strong justification, according to the articles in the journal. But many question whether in fact such revisions are taking place, as opposed to other motivations (such as CV padding). A variety of ethical issues are raised: Is this fair at a time that major conferences are turning away record number of paper proposals? Do those who fill résumés in this way gain an unfair edge over those who give fewer (but perhaps more original) papers? Do those who double dip have an obligation to flag the practice?
Lee Siegelman, a professor at George Washington University and immediate past editor of American Political Science Review, raises the question of whether such double presentations make some professors hypocrites, in light of the direction they provide students.
“Suppose that in a course you are teaching on the presidency during the spring semester, a student seeks your permission to submit, for full credit, a paper on the veto power for which or she already received credit in a course on Congress during the fall semester, or perhaps a somewhat reworked version of that paper. Would you grant the requested permission? I am betting that you wouldn’t. Indeed if you ‘caught’ a student doing what this student has sought permission to do, you may even bring him or her up on plagiarism charges.”
Others, however, defend the duplicate practice. For starters, defenders note that many conference sessions have remarkably small audiences — so if 2 of the 15 audience members at a regional meeting of the discipline heard the same paper at the national meeting, it’s not like hundreds of scholars are being denied anything.
Two political scientists at Michigan State University — Saundra K. Schneider and William G. Jacoby — write jointly to “confess” to duplicate presentations and to defend them. They note several reasons: With more political scientists out there, “research productivity requirements” are growing, and graduate students are expected to present earlier in their academic careers. These trends create “enormous pressure” to present at scholarly meetings when possible and it is “unrealistic and undesirable” to expect completely new work for each such event, they write.
Further, they say, papers do get better with feedback, but that sometimes you need multiple presentations before you get good feedback. If the end result is a paper to be sent to a journal or the start of a book, quality should count, and presenting multiple times encourages quality, they write.
In some other disciplines, the norms are different and there is no shame about duplicate presentations, although there are some issues related to how such papers are noted on CV’s. Rosemary G. Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association, said that it is fairly common for scholars to present a paper more than once. “The audience at MLA is going to be different from the audience at the 18th Century Studies Association,” Feal said. In fact, she noted that scholars are so accepting of the practice that speakers will acknowledge what they are doing with remarks such as “when I last presented, I received a lot of questions about this point,” she said.
And that shows the benefit of the practice, Feal said. Arguments are refined. Issues are clarified.
At the same time, Feal noted that ethical issues are raised if scholars try to imply that that a series of papers — essentially versions of the same work — are all original. The new edition of the MLA Style Manual notes in the plagiarism section the concept of “self plagiarism,” in which a scholar repackages earlier work as if new.
Applying this to conference papers and CV’s, Feal said that it should be clear — if one comes across a long list of papers on a résumé — whether they were all original. Feal said that there is nothing wrong with telling a hiring committee that asks how many papers you gave in the last year that you gave two original papers, three times each at different conferences. But it would be wrong to represent that record as having presented six original papers.
The idea, she said, is “don’t misrepresent what you’ve done.”
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Comments
Double Dipping
A much more severe problem seems to be double dipping in the employment arena—that is holding two jobs. The pressure to publish and dual jobs means that less time and effort is directed to teaching.
John Kuhlman, Prof Emeritus at Univ of Missouri, at 7:45 am EDT on May 20, 2008
and book chapters?
And what about book chapters?
I edited a book, only to find out later that one of the contributors had “double dipped” chapters. The differences amounted to a handful of minor changes.
But what can we expect in the academic arms race these days? No one cares — they only care about output numbers, and so practices like this will continue.
sk, at 9:15 am EDT on May 20, 2008
double dipping
In my field, literary studies, it is absolutely the norm for well-known/famous professors to give the same paper multiple times, to different departments. No one questions this, yet sometimes young faculty and graduate students worry about the practice. For some of the reasons given in the article, I think the concern is silly. Of course there’s a limit, but it seems absurd to see any problem is giving work to a couple or few different audiences when there’s little or no potential overlap.
In fact, I think the opposite situation is a real problem — when people feel compelled to generate brand new conference papers several times a year, and end up producing a lot of work that does not go very deeply.
Apricot, at 9:15 am EDT on May 20, 2008
Purpose?
Is the purpose of presenting a paper to inform and educate the audience? Or is it to advance one’s own career? If it’s the former, then double-dipping is acceptable. If it’s the latter, then no.
And what is the role of the conference program committee in judging the value and interest of each proposal? They could easily set the standard for their conference.
I would always prefer to attend the conference where I would learn the most, regardless of whether or not a speaker has presented on that topic previously.
Rick, at 9:15 am EDT on May 20, 2008
Papers?
I’d like to ask what may sound like a dumb question. Are the “papers” presented at conferences actual papers? I’m in mathematics, and when we present at a conference, we put together a presentation (usually using overhead transparencies or a program like PowerPoint) based on our original work. We usually haven’t yet written a paper on the work-in-progress. In contrast, in MLA conferences, I’m told, presenters literally read papers that they’ve written (papers that haven’t been published).
So if a hiring committee asked me for the “papers” I presented at math conferences, I would have to give them PowerPoint files, not actual papers. What’s the practice in political science?
Dave, at 9:20 am EDT on May 20, 2008
Double-dipping OR Dissemination?
I agree that this is not a problem unless the request is for new research. The research and discovery process inherently includes within it the requirement for dissemination of the knowledge obtained from the project. In my experience, I have presented to 22 people here, 9 people there, a journal article that MAYBE a few people might actually read at some point, and that’s about it. Where’s the double dipping? It seems that the very opposite is the problem. There is a great deal of valuable research that does not become widely known, partly due to those who view themselves as “watchdogs” over professional behavior and try to intimidate us into keeping our newly obtained discoveries to ourselves after sharing it in some virtually insignificant manner. Sheesh.
Henry, at 9:20 am EDT on May 20, 2008
Same paper to different communities?
I must “confess” to having occasionally given substantially similar papers at two different conferences, but only when the overlap in the relevant scholarly communities is vanishingly small. For instance, I have done historical work on a psychologist who was employed by a professional baseball team, and I have given papers on it (not exactly identical, but “tweaked” to suit each community’s knowledge-base and expectations) to a history of psychology conference and to a history of baseball conference. I see nothing wrong with this practice. I think that in decades past, there were far fewer scholarly organizations and scholarly conferences, and people only belonged to one or two. In recent decades, however, the scholarly conference scene has become much more complex and cluttered, as have our scholarly identities. If we belong to multiple communities, there is a strong case to be made for presenting our work to each of them (though we should always be careful not to misrepresent work as having never been seen before if that is not the case).
Cracnku Old Prof, at 9:35 am EDT on May 20, 2008
Where’s the beef?
Perhaps it’s my generation (and if it is, so what?) but I just don’t see what the issue is here. Since when do conference paper presentations “pad” a resume? In my social science field, conference papers don’t get much airplay — they demonstrate that you’re productive, but they are not money in the bank. Only publications really count.
I expect what’s behind the double-dipping is the need to have a paper to present if the scholar is to get funding to attend the conference. Did Dometrius include trends in conference funding availability when he ran his analysis?
And what if your field of research crosses disciplinary boundaries? Double-dipping not only allows for more feedback, but it presents potentially useful material to more than one audience (assuming the same audience is not in the room at multiple conferences). In my field, nobody blinks twice at a little bit of “double dipping", but those who “dip” too many times at the same well are usually well-known and not particularly respected.
And if age is a factor, I’d like to remind Dometrius that there are senior scholars in my field — some from Texas — who have been “dipping” data out of the same dataset for 10 years. They may perform multiple analyses and change their paper titles, but they are not particularly well respected for their minimal labor.
This project looks to me like somebody had a beef and set out to find the data to prove himself right. That kind of inductive methodology is also not particularly well respected. The Journal “PS: Political Science and Politics” could have published better research than this.
Hoosier Prof, at 9:35 am EDT on May 20, 2008
Can student do it to?
If double-dipping is okay, then I guess it is okay for students to turn in the same paper in two different classes. I find the argument for double-dipping pretty weak. Seems like people are trying to pad their CV and justify paid-for trips to conference locations.
Jim, at 9:40 am EDT on May 20, 2008
Learning/Dialogue
Rick poses an interesting question focused on the objective of academic conferences (i.e. is it to promote learning & inquiry or to make scholars look good?), a question that when reflected upon might reveal a deeper problem in academia. Might we have become too concerned with lengthy vitaes and seeing our names printed in glossy brochures? A clear understanding of the purpose of the academy and all that comes with it (publications, conferences, etc.) which I see as an effort to advance knowledge and promote the general well-being of the societies in which we live, seems to answer a lot of these questions. With regard to this particular issue, I’m not sure that one practice or the other (double-dipping vs. all original presentations) is the gospel truth. It seems like it might vary from case to case. The key question in my mind is for each situation, what is most effective in promoting meaningful dialogue? If presenting the same paper to multiple audiences does that, then what is the problem?
Bryce, at 10:50 am EDT on May 20, 2008
Couple of comments: 1: I have had professors who encourage students to “recycle” old papers and upgrade them, and to use course papers to work towards the Thesis (this was in my Poli Sci program), and also towards the dissertation (am now in Education). 2: I also work in Health Care, where it is common practice to tweak previous presentations for later conferences—this allows a different audience to see the presentation (wider dissemination of the research etc to improve patient care). Why wouldn’t this concept apply in liberal arts (or other areas)? 3: If the same people attend all the conferences, then you must have new material every time. 4: For CVs, I feel it would be reasonable to list multiple presentations for one topic—but list it as such. Don’t try to “mask” it and make it sound like you have done lots of different presentations.
It strikes me that this whole issue is one of ethics. If one is trying to take shortcuts and pad a CV or build an ego or. . . then this, or any other practice, can be applied inappropriately to achieve the goal. But if this is done with true scholarly and information sharing intent, then I feel it to be appropriate.
Andre Spain, at 10:50 am EDT on May 20, 2008
Feedback... isn’t that the point?
To me, conferences are continuing education in my field and a chance to get feedback on a journal-length essay in progress when it is still in embryo (or some specific part of it — we only get 15-20 minutes, max, so 8-10 pp. of a 25 pp paper?) I have rarely given the exact same paper twice, but I have presented as-yet-unpublished work in multiple venues on the same or related topics. I’m a literature prof. Different conferences = different audiences, and different feedback about the work.
We do not get much “credit” for conference presentations in any case from our evaluation committee, and the primary value of conferences is networking and feedback on work in progress. I have conference presentations to thank for two of my last three publications.
This “double dipping” issue just isn’t a big deal. We get definite funding for only one conference a year — if you can get that recycled paper into two major conferences, two years in a row... well, that’s up to you, but most of us are changing, growing, producing new stuff year to year. We can apply for additional funding, but it is rarely forthcoming.
I presented a very similar paper at a small, regional, subdiscipline specific conference, then expanded it for a book chapter for a project we were marketing to publishers and presented it again (revised, but substantially similar) at a major conference the following year. After the major conference here in the States, an even more subdiscipline specific conference OVERSEAS wanted it for a panel, since it was on point with the subject of the conference. Hello, Europe! Yes, most of it was funded, and I made invaluable contacts, learned a ton of information about my field, and expanded the international reputation of my grad program. A good investment for less than $2,000, if you ask me. This is lit — our conference fees are relatively cheap, and we eat beans and rice anyway.
Completely different audiences each time, different goals, but substantially similar (if revised and in progress) paper. I’ll be curious to see what people think of that. Three conferences, “same” paper, different audiences, different goals, different feedback... it was a chance to disseminate information and learn something. Is that really fraudulent?
tenure year prof, at 10:50 am EDT on May 20, 2008
The key here is transparency and integrity! in my opinion ‘Double Dipping’ is fine as long as the author is upfront about it. The purpose of presenting research papers remains educating others and learning with, from and about others.
Liliane, Double Dipping, at 10:50 am EDT on May 20, 2008
Double dipping
The issue, of course, is the audience. Ex-presidents give the same “motivational” talks to many groups (at a significant fee), stand-up comedians tell the same jokes, and even a preacher gives the same sermon if he/she is a “guest” at another church. Frankly, if I hear from someone I trust that John Smith’s talk is good, I try to see if I can find him giving it again. If not, it is sort of lost, unless it is published as a transcription. Even that is not the same. You know, it’s “how you tell it.” Of course, you don’t want to hear the same thing over and over again. (I felt sorry for my wife having to hear my, albeit highly humorous, jokes about 100 times.)
I cannot imagine sending even these highly insightful thoughts to another blog. But, pity my poor colleagues who have to “hear” them as I repeat them “over and over and over and ...” ad infinitum. So, as far as I am concerned—and I’m really not very concerned—publishing the same wisdom in different forums is acceptable only under highly unusual circumstances, but making the same presentation, go for it. It is also a form of evaluation. If 10 show up at the first presentation, and 100 at the next, yea. However if 2 show up at the next, hmm???
Fred Flener, Retired at Northeastern Illinois University, at 11:15 am EDT on May 20, 2008
So what’s new?
As an undergraduate 40 years ago, I often ran across similar scholarly articles by the same author or group of authors that presented the same research slightly tweaked for the particular journal’s audience.
Ken Bielen, Dir. of Grants Management at Indiana Wesleyan University, at 11:20 am EDT on May 20, 2008
There are two main problems with this form of double-dipping. First is the waste of audience members’ time, if they have already seen the material. Others have mentioned above that the solution is to be sure that the audiences to which one presents are largely non-overlapping. Second is the inappropriate inflation of c.v.’s. The solution here is to list a presentation as a single item on the c.v., along with citation information about each of the conferences at which this single presentation was made.
Melissa Anderson, at 2:10 pm EDT on May 20, 2008
Carbon Copy Conference Papers
Back in the last century, my grad school mentor urged me to present the same paper to several meetings, under different titles.
Mike Licht, at 2:10 pm EDT on May 20, 2008
Double Dipping
How are multiple presentations of the same material at two or more conferences different from multiple presentations in three different contexts — a conference, a published journal article and a chapter of a book — all using (basically) the same material?
David Kincheloe, Professor, at 2:15 pm EDT on May 20, 2008
Surprised that this is an issue
I’m relatively new to higher ed (six years), because I was working in my field for 20-something years before that. However, I concur with Andre that it was standard operating procedure in grad school for us to reuse parts of materials we had produced in later materials. It was expected, and that is the way we were instructed to proceed, as if proceeding any other way would have been to reinvent the wheel. I presented a paper earlier this year at a conference, and hope to present substantially the same paper at other conferences. Since these will be regional rather than national conferences, there shouldn’t be any overlap in attendees, so I don’t think anyone is getting ripped off. When I apply to those other conferences, I will note that I have presented the paper already at XYZ conference, and if they want to talk to the folks who put that one together to see how it went over, that only strengthens my application. On my CV, I wouldn’t dream of noting these presentations any other way than as multiple presentations of the same material. First of all, multiple presentations of well-received materials are standard in my field (music) — a kind of speakers’ bureau concept — and second of all, nobody will be fooled by trying to pass old material off as new — the field is too small! So maybe I’m one of the newbies who just doesn’t get the former tradition of a prohibition on previously presented material, but I have to concur with others who have said that whether or not it is okay depends on the intent.
NOT trying to fool anyone!, at 3:35 pm EDT on May 20, 2008
I am a first year PhD student in a major university and I see double dipping all the time. I have presented the results of my MA thesis at four different conferences (three graduate student conferences and one major international conference) and got funding for all of them. I think double dipping should not be viewed as a negative because it is really what everyone else does anyway. As someone above said, why is it not considered double dipping if you present the paper at a conference, publish it as an article, and then as a chapter in a book? Graduate students and professors have ever increasing competition for jobs to deal with. Producing a new paper for each conference one attends will lead to superficial work. Why is it OK for politicians to give the same speeches to different groups and not for academics? A certain NY senator gave the commencement speech at my graduation and I’ve been told that he gives the same speech (with the same stories and jokes) every year at graduation. Is this not to be considered double dipping?
Lana, at 5:15 am EDT on May 21, 2008
Intereresting Subject
I am new at this game, but in my discipline it is usually explictly stated that only new research, and non previously presented papers may be submitted. There are however exceptions and often you will see a conference where not only previously presented and even published material is acceptable, it is encouraged. I just follow the requirements of the conference.
B. David Ridpath, Asst Professor at Ohio University, at 11:25 am EDT on May 23, 2008
What about published double dippings
I have known prominent scholars to have assistants run a citation search in different international journals. In the journals where he/she was not well known or cited, he/she would simply send older published papers in translation. So, in effect he/she had the same articles published in journals in multiple languages. Other than using a lot of paper, it probably didn’t matter too much because he/she pretty much said the same thing over and over throughout his/her career.
James O. Bellis, Double Dipping on Global Scale, at 5:35 pm EDT on June 2, 2008
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I can see the reason for conference organizers to specify original or substantially revised papers, but not sure why this issue should affect anyone else. Several disciplines expect that repeat presenters have made independent progress, perhaps stimulated by earlier feedback, and welcome much improved papers. So do journal editors.
If vita look padded and recruitment committees are suspicious, they can always request copies of papers and make their own comparisons. This alone will deter strategic behavior. If committees choose not to review applicant materials with care, they deserve what they get.
e, at 6:35 am EDT on May 20, 2008