It has been discussed and explained many times that in (at least some subdisciplines of) Computer Science, conference publications have a special status compared to many other fields - where in other fields, journals are the only way of publication, in Computer Science, many conferences allow publications with a comparable peer-review process as a journal, and consequently, reputable conferences in some subfields have a similar standing as reputable journals.
Some exemplary resources that outline this peculiarity:
While the perception of a special treatment of conferences in Computer Science appears to be evident, there are sometimes hints this can actually be observed in a few other fields, as well:
Daniel Standage writes in his question:
(...) whereas some of the more quantitative and technical fields (comp sci and engineering especially) seem to be focused on getting accepted to high-profile conferences with low acceptance rate (...)
(...) CS and related fields very heavily weight conference presentations and proceedings papers (...)
badroit cites from the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Minnesota: Criteria for Promotion and Tenure:
A 1994 NRC Committee on Academic Careers for Experimental Computer Science stated “The requirements for good research and engineering in experimental computer science and engineering (ECSE) are different from those of many other academic disciplines” and then added “Because conferences are the vehicle of choice in ECSE for the dissemination of research, well-refereed conference proceedings (as well as work published in refereed private journals) should be given as much weight as archival journal articles
On the other hand, there is also the contrary claim, that Computer Science is an absolute exception with this. For instance, aeismail remarks in one of his answers:
(...) I would argue that the weighting of conference papers seems to be restricted to computer science (...)
Likewise, Lance Fortnow starts his article Viewpoint: Time for computer science to grow up by stating:
Unlike every other academic field, computer science uses conferences rather than journals as the main publication venue.
As it is notable that a rather unspecific "engineering" is consistently mentioned in the examples that imply a few other fields use conferences the same way as CS, I have tried to track down those fields, but could not come to any useful conclusions. In particular, I am not even sure what to look for, because "engineering" might mean various things:
- It might mean all of engineering, which I find improbable (that would probably mean peer-reviewed conference publications are not as unheard of in other fields as some CS people suggest).
- It might mean a few subfields in engineering. To find more information, knowing which subfields those are would probably be helpful.
- It might actually be a pleonasm for computer science, in a way that a department for "engineering and computer science" wants to highlight it does not only deal with theoretical aspects, but also investigates "technical", "practical" sides of computer science.
Thus, my question is: Are there any other fields beside Computer Science that use peer-reviewed conferences for publication, where such conference publications have a similar standing as journal publications? If so, what are some examples of such other fields?
Note: I consider this an answerable question, not an indefinite list question. One or a few verifiable examples for other fields that use conferences as described - or a sufficiently convincing statement or reference that shows there are no such other fields at all - are completely sufficient, I am not looking for an exhaustive list of fields.
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