How to Publish at An Economics & Finance Conference?

You’ve spent months building your research — testing models, reviewing literature, running regressions — and now someone tells you to “submit to a conference.” Simple enough, until you actually try to do it. Which conference is the right fit for your paper? Does the abstract go through peer review or not? What does the registration fee cover? Is the proceedings publication even indexed in Scopus or Web of Science? For most PhD students and early-career researchers in economics and finance, the process feels like a maze with no map.

Quick answer: To publish at an economics or finance conference, you follow four core steps — submit your abstract through the conference’s submission portal, pass double-blind peer review, clear a plagiarism check on your full manuscript, and receive publication in the official conference proceedings. If the proceedings are indexed (Scopus, Web of Science, or carry ABDC listing recognition), your paper gains formal academic visibility and a citable record that counts toward your research profile.

The problem is that nobody teaches this end-to-end. Your supervisor might tell you to “find a good conference,” but they won’t walk you through manuscript formatting requirements, how to respond to reviewer comments, whether to choose oral presentation or poster presentation, or how to spot a predatory conference before you hand over a registration fee. And that’s before you even think about how your conference paper eventually feeds into a full journal version.

This guide covers every stage of that process — from identifying the right conference track match for your work, to handling revision submission, to positioning your paper for journal publication after the conference. Whether you’re a PhD student submitting for the first time or a researcher who has always found the process unclear, this roadmap will give you a clear, practical path from first draft to published proceedings and beyond.

The Complete Process of Publishing at Economics and Finance Conferences — At a Glance

Getting a paper into an economics or finance conference is a multi-stage process, but the core path breaks down into four steps. Here’s the direct version.

Step 1: Pick the right conference. Not all conferences are equal. You want one that’s indexed — Scopus and Web of Science are the benchmarks most institutions and hiring committees actually care about. Check the ABDC listing too if your work sits in finance or management. Before anything else, confirm the conference isn’t predatory. If the organizer sends you an unsolicited email promising “guaranteed acceptance,” walk away. A legitimate economics or finance conference has a clearly stated double-blind peer review process, a known editorial board, and past proceedings you can find and read.

Step 2: Submit your abstract, then your full manuscript. Most conferences run a two-stage submission. First you send an abstract — usually 250 to 500 words — through the conference’s submission portal. If it clears the initial screen, you’ll get an invitation to submit the full paper. At that point, formatting matters. Read the manuscript formatting guidelines before you touch your template, not after. Run a plagiarism check before submission. Many conferences now require this explicitly, and reviewers do flag it.

Track match matters more than people think. Submitting a behavioral finance paper to a macro track is a fast way to get a rejection that has nothing to do with your paper’s quality.

Step 3: Handle reviewer comments and get accepted. Reviewer feedback under double-blind peer review can be blunt. Respond to every point — even the ones you disagree with. A short revision submission that ignores a major comment signals to reviewers that you didn’t read carefully. Turnaround time varies, but most conferences give you two to four weeks for minor revisions. Use that time.

Step 4: Present, publish your conference proceedings paper, and plan the journal version. Once accepted, you’ll choose between oral presentation and poster presentation — or the conference decides for you based on the review score. Either way, pay the registration fee and confirm your slot. Your paper then appears in the conference proceedings, which may be open access or behind a paywall depending on the publisher. That proceedings paper is a publication, but it’s a starting point. Most serious researchers in economics and finance treat it as a draft toward a full journal publication — you revise, extend the empirical work, and submit to a peer-reviewed journal. Early-career researchers and PhD students especially benefit from this pipeline: you get feedback at the conference stage, then a stronger paper goes to the journal.

That’s the whole arc. The rest of this guide covers each step in detail.

Choosing the Right Conference — Where One Mistake Can Make All Your Hard Work Worthless

Picking the wrong conference is one of the most costly mistakes you can make as a researcher. Not just in money — though registration fees and travel add up fast — but in time and credibility. A paper published in the wrong venue can actually hurt your CV more than no publication at all. So before you submit anything, get the selection step right.

How to Verify Reputation and Indexing (Scopus, Web of Science, ABDC Listing)

Start with indexing. A conference that indexes its proceedings in Scopus or Web of Science is the baseline standard for most economics and finance departments globally. That indexing is what makes your conference paper count — for tenure reviews, for PhD milestones, for grant applications.

Here’s the practical check:

Go to the Scopus source list (scopus.com/sources) and search the conference name or the proceedings title directly. Do the same on the Web of Science master journal list. If the proceedings don’t appear on either, that’s a red flag, not a dealbreaker — but you need a very good reason to proceed.

The ABDC listing is different. It’s the Australian Business Deans Council’s quality classification, primarily used for journals, but some hiring committees and grant bodies in economics and finance also reference it when evaluating conference quality. If the conference has a linked journal that’s ABDC-ranked (A*, A, B, or C), that connection adds weight to the proceedings publication.

Don’t rely on what the conference website claims. Conferences lie. Or they were indexed once years ago and aren’t anymore. Always verify directly from the indexing body’s own database, not from a claim in the conference’s “About” page.

Check whether the proceedings are published by a recognizable academic publisher — Springer, Elsevier, IEEE, Wiley, or a university press. Open access proceedings are fine, but “open access” hosted on a conference’s own website with no DOI system is not the same thing.

Scope and Track Match — Which Conference Is the Right Fit for Your Paper

This is where early-career researchers and PhD students often go wrong. They find a prestigious conference and submit — without checking whether their paper actually belongs there.

Every economics or finance conference has a defined scope, and most have multiple tracks: macroeconomics, behavioral finance, financial markets, development economics, monetary policy, and so on. Your paper needs to match a specific track, not just the general subject area.

Read the call for papers carefully. Not the homepage — the actual CFP document. It’ll tell you what the program committee prioritizes that year, what methodologies they expect, and what themes they’re building the conference around.

A paper on household debt and financial literacy doesn’t automatically fit a conference themed around corporate finance and capital markets, even though both are “finance.” Submit it there and you’ll either get rejected outright or end up presenting to an audience that doesn’t care about your work. Neither outcome helps you.

Track match also affects your reviewer assignment. In double-blind peer review, the program committee routes your paper to reviewers based on keywords and the track you select. Pick the wrong track, and your reviewers will be the wrong people — and you’ll see that reflected in the feedback, which will feel oddly generic or miss the point of your contribution.

Before you submit, identify two or three papers from the previous edition of the conference that are closest to your work. If they exist and were accepted, your paper has found a home. If nothing similar has ever appeared in that conference’s program, ask yourself why.

How to Identify Predatory Conferences

Predatory conferences are a real and growing problem in economics and finance. They take your registration fee, sometimes publish your paper in a fake proceedings volume, and occasionally don’t even hold the event. A paper published there does zero good and can actively damage your reputation if a hiring committee or journal editor notices it.

The warning signs are consistent:

• Too-broad scope. A single conference claiming to cover economics, engineering, medicine, and social sciences simultaneously is not a real academic conference. It’s a fee-collection operation.
• No named program committee. Legitimate conferences list their scientific committee publicly. Real researchers with real affiliations. If you see only generic titles like “international organizing committee” with no names, walk away.
• Immediate acceptance. You submit an abstract and receive full acceptance within 24-48 hours, before any review could have happened. Double-blind peer review takes weeks, minimum. Instant acceptance means there was no review.
• Unusually high or opaque registration fees. Fees vary widely — $300 to $800 is typical for reputable economics conferences — but predatory ones often charge above that with no clear breakdown, or ask for payment before any acceptance decision is communicated.
• No archived proceedings. Search for papers from previous editions of the conference. If nothing shows up in Google Scholar, Scopus, or any academic database, those proceedings don’t exist in any meaningful sense.

Use Beall’s List as a starting point — it’s been revived by several researchers and mirrors exist online — but don’t treat it as exhaustive. Cross-check against your department’s approved conference list if one exists. Ask your supervisor or a senior colleague. If you can’t find a single person in your field who has attended or reviewed for that conference, that absence tells you something.

The plagiarism check piece matters here too. Predatory conferences often skip it entirely — and journals will catch that later when you try to convert the conference paper to a journal version. A legitimate submission portal will require you to pass a plagiarism check before the manuscript advances. If a conference doesn’t mention it at all, that’s another data point worth noting.

Choosing the right conference isn’t glamorous work. It’s an hour of database searches and reading. But it’s the hour that determines whether everything else you do actually pays off.

Abstract and Full Paper Submission — Step by Step

Abstract Writing Format and How to Use the Submission Portal

Most economics and finance conferences ask for an abstract before they ever want to see your full paper. This is your first filter. Get it wrong and you won’t move forward, no matter how good the research is.

A typical conference abstract runs between 250 and 500 words. Some are shorter — 150 words for a poster presentation slot, for example. Read the call for papers carefully because the word limit is non-negotiable in most submission portals; the system will cut you off or reject the file outright.

Your abstract needs four things: the research question, the method, the main finding, and a sentence on contribution. That’s it. Don’t pad it with background literature or lengthy caveats. Reviewers are reading dozens of these. Be direct.

Track match matters more than most people realize. If the conference has separate tracks for monetary economics, behavioral finance, or financial markets, submit to the one that genuinely fits your paper. Submitting to the wrong track is one of the fastest ways to get a weak review or an outright desk rejection — not because your paper is poor, but because the reviewer assigned to that track isn’t your audience.

For the submission portal itself: create your account early. Don’t wait until the deadline day. Portals like Oxford Abstracts, EasyChair, or conference-specific systems sometimes have quirks — file size limits, required metadata fields, mandatory keyword lists. You’ll need your abstract text, author details (be careful about blind submission rules — more on that below), institutional affiliation, and sometimes a JEL classification code.

Double-blind peer review is standard at serious economics and finance conferences. That means your abstract and paper must not contain your name, institution, or any identifying acknowledgment when you upload. A surprising number of submissions get flagged because the author forgot to strip metadata from the PDF or left “University of [X]” in the header. Before you hit submit, check the document properties too — Word and PDF files carry author metadata that can break anonymity.

Save your submission confirmation email. If anything goes wrong with the portal, that’s your proof of submission.

Preparing Your Full Paper Manuscript — Formatting, Word Limit, and Template

Not every conference asks for a full paper at abstract submission stage. Many do a two-stage process: abstract first, then an invitation to submit the full manuscript. Others — particularly those indexed in Scopus or Web of Science — want the complete paper upfront. Check which applies to your target conference.

Once you’re submitting a full paper, formatting becomes non-trivial. Most conferences publish a template — usually a Word document or LaTeX file — and they expect you to use it exactly. Don’t freelance the margins, font size, or reference style. Conference proceedings have specific layout requirements because they’re compiled into a single volume, and a paper that deviates from the template can get sent back without review.

Typical requirements for a full conference paper in economics or finance:

• Word limit: 6,000–10,000 words including references, though some allow up to 12,000
• Font: Times New Roman 12pt or similar; LaTeX users often follow the conference’s .cls file
• Reference style: APA, Chicago Author-Date, or a journal-specific style depending on the conference
• Tables and figures: embedded in the text, not at the end — unless the template specifies otherwise
• Equations: numbered, right-aligned, formatted consistently

If the conference is associated with an ABDC-listed journal or is feeding papers into a special journal issue, the formatting requirements may mirror that journal’s submission guidelines. In that case, check both the conference website and the journal’s author guidelines — they sometimes differ slightly.

For PhD students and early-career researchers submitting for the first time: don’t skip the template because it looks tedious. A sloppily formatted manuscript signals carelessness before a reviewer has read a single sentence of your argument.

Manuscript length discipline also matters. If the limit is 8,000 words and your draft is 11,000, cut it — don’t try to reduce the font size or shrink the margins to make it fit visually. Reviewers notice, and it looks amateurish.

Run a Plagiarism Check on Your Own Before Submitting

This step is skipped far more often than it should be. Many conferences run submitted papers through plagiarism detection before they go to reviewers, and a high similarity score will get your paper flagged or rejected without review. Don’t let that happen because you didn’t check your own work first.

Run your paper through a plagiarism checker yourself before submission. iThenticate is the industry standard in academic publishing — many universities give researchers access through their library. Turnitin is also common, though it’s more widely available through institutional student accounts. If you don’t have institutional access, unicheck and some other services offer pay-per-document options.

What you’re looking for is the similarity percentage and, more specifically, where the matches are coming from. A paper in economics can legitimately have 10–15% similarity just from standard methodological language, quoted data descriptions, and reference list matches. That’s not a problem. What’s a problem is a continuous passage of 30–40 words that matches another source without quotation marks or proper attribution — even if that source is your own earlier work.

Yes, self-plagiarism is real. If you’re building this conference paper from your thesis chapter or an earlier working paper, you need to paraphrase and update — or explicitly cite your prior work. Some conferences explicitly ask whether any portion of the paper has been previously published, including as a working paper. Answer honestly.

After running the check, go through the highlighted sections manually. The tool will flag things that aren’t actually problems — your own reference list, for instance, or a commonly used phrase in the field. Use your judgment. What you want to eliminate is any unintentional copying from the literature you reviewed.

Get the similarity score down before you submit. Coming back later with “the checker gave a false positive” is a conversation nobody wants to have with a program committee.

The Peer Review Process — How Double-Blind Review Works

Most economics and finance conferences use double-blind peer review. That means the reviewers don’t know who you are, and you don’t know who they are. Your job is to write a paper that holds up on its own merits — no institutional name-dropping, no self-identifying citations that give you away, no “as I argued in my 2022 paper” phrasing in the manuscript body.

When you submit through the conference’s submission portal, you’ll typically upload two files: a title page with your name and affiliation, and an anonymized manuscript with all author information stripped out. Some portals handle this automatically; others rely entirely on you to get it right. Get it wrong, and your submission may be desk-rejected before a single reviewer sees it.

Reviewers — usually two or three per paper — are assigned based on track match. A macro panel reviewer isn’t going to be assessing your corporate governance study. The conference program committee tries to align expertise, though this varies enormously in practice. After reading and scoring your manuscript, each reviewer submits a recommendation: accept, minor revision, major revision, or reject. The program committee then aggregates these and sends you a decision.

Timelines differ. Some conferences send decisions within four weeks of the submission deadline. Others take three months. Check the conference website carefully. If you haven’t heard anything by two weeks past their stated decision date, a polite single-line email to the program chair is reasonable.

Handling Reviewer Comments and Submitting Your Revision

A “major revision” is not a rejection. Treat it as a conditional acceptance with work attached.

Read the reviewer comments once, then step away for a day. Your first reaction is almost never your best one. When you come back, read them again with a document open. List every single comment — numbered, categorized by reviewer. Some will be about the methodology. Some will be about the literature you missed. Some will frankly be wrong or poorly aimed. You still have to address all of them.

Your revision submission has two components: the revised manuscript and a response letter. The response letter is not optional and it’s not a formality. Go through every comment in order. Quote the reviewer’s exact words, then explain what you did. If you made a change, paste in the relevant revised paragraph. If you disagreed with a comment and chose not to change the paper, explain why — clearly, without being defensive. Reviewers respond better to “we believe X because Y” than to silence or vague acknowledgment.

One practical thing most early-career researchers and PhD students miss: be explicit about where in the revised manuscript the changes appear. Write “revised on page 8, third paragraph” rather than “we have addressed this concern.” Reviewers reviewing your revision are not re-reading the whole paper from scratch. Make it easy for them.

If the conference asks you to resubmit through the portal, pay close attention to the file naming conventions and format requirements. Manuscript formatting for the revision needs to match the conference’s style guide exactly — some conferences are strict about font, margins, and reference formats at the revision stage even if they weren’t at first submission.

What to Do If Your Paper Gets Rejected

It happens. Finance and economics conferences at Scopus-indexed or Web of Science-indexed venues can have acceptance rates below 20%. A rejection doesn’t mean the paper is bad. It means it didn’t make the cut for that particular venue at that particular time.

Read the rejection feedback before doing anything else. If reviewers gave substantive comments, those are free consulting on your paper. Use them. A rejection with two pages of reviewer notes is more valuable than a lukewarm acceptance with no feedback.

Check whether the conference distinguishes between different types of rejection. Some programs reject papers from oral presentation but offer poster presentation as an alternative. That’s still a conference appearance, still a line in the proceedings, and for a PhD student building a CV, it counts. Don’t automatically decline a poster offer without thinking it through.

If the rejection came with no feedback, or thin feedback, the most likely reasons are: poor track match, a topic that was overrepresented in submissions that cycle, or a formatting or plagiarism check issue that caused early elimination. Run your paper through a plagiarism checker before the next submission if you haven’t already.

After revising based on rejection feedback, your next target should be chosen carefully. Don’t immediately fire it at a higher-ranked conference out of frustration, and don’t drop it to a clearly weaker venue just to get a publication credit. Look at the ABDC listing if the conference has a journal partner, look at the indexing status, and make sure the paper genuinely fits the new venue’s scope and track structure.

Some strong conference papers go on to become journal publications after a significant expansion of the empirical work or literature review. The conference paper and the journal version are treated as different outputs — the journal version needs to be substantially different, not a copy-paste. Predatory conference organizers sometimes exploit this confusion by claiming that submission to their proceedings guarantees journal publication. It doesn’t. If a conference is making that guarantee upfront, treat it as a red flag and check the venue thoroughly before paying any registration fee.

Submission Fees and Registration Costs — Real Numbers and What to Watch Out For

Let’s talk money. This part of the process catches a lot of early-career researchers and PhD students off guard, and it’s easy to blow your budget if you don’t know what you’re actually signing up for.

What You’ll Typically Pay

Most legitimate economics and finance conferences charge two separate things: a submission fee (sometimes) and a registration fee (always, if your paper is accepted).

Submission fees are not universal. Many well-regarded conferences — including several indexed in Scopus and Web of Science — don’t charge anything to submit. When they do, it’s usually between $30 and $100. If a conference charges you $200+ just to submit an abstract, that’s a red flag worth taking seriously.

Registration fees are a different story. These are mandatory if your paper gets accepted and you want it included in the conference proceedings. For a mid-tier international economics or finance conference, expect to pay somewhere in the range of $400 to $800 USD. Top-tier events — think AFA, EFA, or major ABDC-listed conference gatherings — can run $900 to $1,500 or more, particularly when they’re held in expensive cities.

Online conferences are cheaper. Since COVID pushed a lot of events virtual, plenty of conferences now offer hybrid models. Virtual attendance registration often sits between $150 and $350, which is a real option for PhD students who don’t have departmental travel funding.

The Full Cost Picture

Don’t just look at the registration fee. If you’re attending in person, you’re also paying for:

• Flights and accommodation (easily $800–$2,000 depending on location)
• Visa fees if applicable
• Per-page or open access charges if the proceedings publisher charges for that

Some conferences publish proceedings through Springer, Elsevier, or similar academic publishers. Open access options for conference papers in those proceedings can add another $500–$2,000 on top of registration. Check whether open access is required by your funder before you commit.

What to Watch For — Predatory Conferences

This is where things get dangerous. Predatory conferences exist specifically to extract money from researchers, particularly those who are early-career and under pressure to add publications to their CV.

The signs are consistent. You get a cold email inviting you to present, often with flattering language about your “distinguished work.” The conference website looks rushed — stock photos, vague committee lists, no clear track match or academic scope. The proceedings aren’t indexed anywhere meaningful, or they claim indexing that turns out to be fake or low-quality.

The registration fee for predatory conferences is often surprisingly high — $600 to $1,200 — with nothing legitimate to show for it at the end. Your conference paper ends up in a non-indexed, non-peer-reviewed volume that won’t help your journal publication track record. In some cases, there’s no double-blind peer review at all; your abstract submission triggers an automatic acceptance within days.

If acceptance came in under two weeks with no reviewer comments, be suspicious. Real conferences with double-blind peer review take 6–12 weeks minimum.

How to Verify Before You Pay

Before you pay anything, do three checks.

First, look up the conference proceedings from previous years. Search the title in Scopus or Web of Science. If past volumes don’t show up, the indexing claim is probably false.

Second, check whether the conference appears in the ABDC listing or is officially associated with a recognised academic society in economics or finance. Conferences tied to the American Economic Association, the American Finance Association, the European Finance Association, or equivalent bodies are safe. Random “International Journal of Economics and Finance Conference 2026” events with no traceable organising body are not.

Third, look at the programme committee. Real names, real institutions, verifiable academic profiles. If the committee page is vague or lists people without institutional affiliations, walk away.

Fee Waivers and Funding

This is worth spending ten minutes on. Many conferences offer reduced or waived registration fees for PhD students, especially those presenting work rather than just attending. You usually need to apply separately through the submission portal or contact the conference organiser directly after acceptance.

National research councils, central banks, and university departments often have dedicated conference travel funding. Apply for it early — most require you to have an accepted paper before they’ll approve funds, but some allow you to apply on the basis of a submitted abstract. Know your institution’s deadline cycles, because they don’t bend them.

If your paper is co-authored, only one author typically needs to register for the paper to appear in the proceedings. On a tight budget, that matters.

Publication in Conference Proceedings — Is This a Real Publication?

Yes, it counts. But how much it counts depends entirely on where those proceedings end up indexed, and that’s what most early-career researchers and PhD students don’t think about until after they’ve already submitted.

A conference paper published in proceedings is a legitimate academic output. It’s cited, it’s listed on CVs, it can form the empirical basis for a future journal version. The question isn’t whether it’s “real” — it’s whether anyone in your field will see it, respect it, and whether it’ll survive scrutiny from hiring committees or grant reviewers.

Where Proceedings Are Indexed and How Much They Are Worth

This is the part that matters most.

The top-tier economics and finance conferences publish proceedings that get indexed in Scopus or Web of Science. That changes everything. A Scopus-indexed conference paper shows up in citation databases, contributes to your h-index, and carries weight when you’re going up for a position or applying for funding. A non-indexed one is basically a PDF on a university website.

Check before you submit. Go to the Scopus source list or the Web of Science master journal list and search for the conference proceedings title directly. Don’t trust what the conference website says. Some conferences claim indexing that expired years ago or was never confirmed.

The ABDC listing applies to journals, not conferences — so don’t confuse the two. An ABDC A journal is not the same as an A conference. There’s no equivalent ABDC ranking for conference proceedings in economics and finance the way there is in information systems or computer science. In econ and finance, the conference itself carries the prestige, not a formal ranking of its proceedings.

For high-status conferences — think AEA, EFA, WFA — the proceedings aren’t the point. Getting in is the signal. The paper you present there becomes your working paper, then (hopefully) your journal publication. The conference paper itself may not be formally “published” in a proceedings volume at all.

For mid-tier and regional economics and finance conferences, proceedings publication is common and genuinely useful, especially if it’s indexed. But the ceiling is lower. A proceedings paper won’t substitute for a peer-reviewed journal publication in most tenure cases. It supplements, it doesn’t replace.

Check whether the conference has a history of predatory behavior. Some predatory conferences produce “proceedings” that claim Scopus indexing but aren’t actually indexed. You can verify this in under five minutes. If a conference charges unusually high registration fees, has almost no rejection rate, and the editorial board is vague or unverifiable, walk away.

Open Access Proceedings vs. Restricted Access

Some conference proceedings are open access — the full paper sits online, freely available, indexed in Google Scholar and potentially in Scopus or Web of Science. Others are restricted, either behind a publisher paywall or only accessible to conference attendees. This distinction matters more than most researchers realise.

Open access proceedings travel further. Other researchers find them, cite them, build on them. If your goal is visibility and citation count — which it should be as someone building a research profile — an openly accessible proceedings paper does a lot more work for you than one locked in a subscription database.

That said, open access doesn’t automatically mean high quality. Some open access proceedings have very light peer review. The double-blind peer review process you’d expect from a serious conference may be replaced with a cursory editorial check. Read the submission portal details carefully. If the review process isn’t described in any detail, that’s a flag.

There’s also a downstream consideration. If you plan to submit a full, expanded journal version after the conference — which is usually the smart move — you need to check whether the journal considers your proceedings paper prior publication. Many journals are fine with it, especially if the journal version is substantially expanded and the proceedings version is openly accessible. But some journals won’t take it. Check the target journal’s policy before you commit your paper to open access proceedings.

Restricted-access proceedings sidestep that particular problem, but they create their own: your paper sits largely unseen until you push it somewhere else yourself, such as SSRN or your institutional repository.

For most researchers at the early stage of a project, open access indexed proceedings is the stronger choice, provided the conference itself is legitimate and the peer review process is credible.

Rules and Tips for Presenting Your Paper at a Conference

Getting accepted is one thing. Actually standing up and presenting your work is where a lot of researchers — especially PhD students and early-career researchers — feel the pressure most. A weak presentation can undermine a strong paper. A confident, well-structured one can open doors to collaborations, journal invitations, and feedback that genuinely improves your work.

Here’s what you need to know before you walk into that room.

Oral Presentation vs. Poster Presentation

Most economics and finance conferences offer two formats. When you submit, you may be asked to rank your preference, though the program committee makes the final call based on the paper’s fit and session availability.

Oral presentations are the standard format. You get a slot — usually 15 to 20 minutes — followed by 5 to 10 minutes of Q&A. Your paper gets assigned to a thematic session, so the audience will mostly be people working in related areas. This is high-exposure. Discussants are often assigned to read your paper in advance and give structured feedback. That feedback can be gold, especially if you’re planning a journal version afterward.

Poster presentations get underestimated. They shouldn’t be. A poster session puts you in direct, one-on-one conversation with other researchers for an extended period — sometimes 60 to 90 minutes. You explain your paper repeatedly, answer questions on the spot, and get unfiltered reactions. For empirical work with a lot of methodology detail, this format can actually generate more useful feedback than a 20-minute talk. It’s also lower-stakes for first-timers.

If you’re a PhD student presenting for the first time, a poster session is a reasonable starting point. Less pressure. More conversation. You still get the conference paper credit in the proceedings.

If the conference gives you a choice, look at which format fits your paper better. A theoretical macro paper with a clean argument works well as an oral presentation. A dense empirical study with multiple robustness checks might benefit from the back-and-forth a poster session allows.

Practical Tips for Building Your Presentation

Slide structure

For a 15 to 20 minute oral slot, 12 to 15 slides is about right. That’s it. More than that and you’ll rush, skip slides, or lose the audience.

A clean structure for most economics and finance papers:

• Slide 1 — Title, authors, affiliation. Clean. No clutter.
• Slide 2 — Motivation and research question. One clear question. Why does this matter?
• Slide 3 — Brief literature position. Not a literature review — just where your paper sits and what gap it fills. Two or three references maximum on screen.
• Slide 4 — Data and methodology. One slide. Sometimes two if your identification strategy is the core contribution.
• Slides 5 to 10 — Main results. Lead with your headline finding. Then support it. Show tables and figures, but don’t paste your full regression table onto a slide — extract the coefficients that matter.
• Slide 11 to 12 — Robustness and extensions. Brief. Reviewers and discussants will ask about this during Q&A anyway.
• Slide 13 — Conclusion and contribution. Three bullet points max. What did you find? What does it imply?

Don’t put your entire abstract on slide one. Don’t use font smaller than 20pt anywhere. Don’t animate every bullet point — it wastes time and irritates people.

If your paper has a strong visual — a graph showing a trend break, a map, a clear scatter plot — put it front and center. Economics audiences respond well to visual evidence.

Time management

Practice out loud. Not in your head. Out loud, alone, with a timer running.

Most presenters go over time because they underestimate how long it takes to explain a methodology or walk through a results table in spoken words rather than skimming text. A slide that takes 10 seconds to read silently can take 90 seconds to explain properly to a room.

A rough time allocation for a 20-minute slot:

• Motivation and research question: 2 to 3 minutes
• Data and methodology: 4 to 5 minutes
• Results: 8 to 9 minutes
• Conclusion: 2 minutes
• Leave 1 minute buffer — sessions run late, microphones fail, someone asks a question mid-talk

If you’re assigned a discussant, get your paper to them early. Most conference programs specify a deadline, but even if they don’t, sending it a week ahead is basic professional courtesy. A discussant who’s had time to actually read your paper will give you far more useful comments than one who skimmed it that morning.

During Q&A, write down every question. Even the ones you can answer immediately. You will not remember them all by the time you’re back at your hotel. Those questions — especially from senior researchers — often point directly at the weaknesses a journal referee will also find. That’s free pre-submission peer review. Take it seriously.

One last thing. If you’re asked something you don’t know the answer to, say so. “That’s outside the scope of this version, but it’s a good direction for the follow-up” is a perfectly fine response. Trying to bluff a roomful of economists rarely ends well.

From Conference Paper to Journal Publication — The Next Step

Getting your paper into a conference proceedings is real progress. But for most economists and finance researchers, especially PhD students and early-career researchers, the conference is often just the first stop — not the final destination.

Can You Submit the Same Paper to Both a Conference and a Journal?

Short answer: yes, but with conditions.

Most economics and finance journals accept papers that have already appeared in conference proceedings — provided the conference version is not the final, polished manuscript you’re submitting to them. This is standard practice. Presenting at a conference does not count as prior publication in the journal sense. The American Economic Review, the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies — all of them see conference presentations as part of normal academic workflow, not as a conflict.

What you cannot do is submit identical text simultaneously to a conference and a journal, or try to pass off a published journal article as a new conference paper. That’s duplicate submission, and it’s taken seriously.

A few things to confirm before you proceed:

• Check the journal’s submission guidelines. Some journals explicitly require a statement that the manuscript is not under review elsewhere. Others ask whether a prior conference version exists.
• Check what the conference proceedings actually published. If the proceedings are indexed in Scopus or Web of Science and published as a citable document with a DOI, some journals will treat that differently than a simple abstract book.
• Open access proceedings with a DOI carry more weight — and occasionally more restriction — than a password-protected PDF on a conference website.

If you’re unsure, email the journal’s editorial office. It’s a two-minute question that saves months of wasted effort.

How to Upgrade Your Conference Version into a Full Journal Version

Conference papers are typically short — 6,000 to 10,000 words in economics, sometimes less. Journal articles at a top outlet usually demand significantly more: deeper literature coverage, more rigorous methodology, additional robustness checks, and a fuller discussion of implications.

Think of the conference version as a proof of concept. The journal version is the complete argument.

Here’s what that upgrade usually involves:

• Expand the literature review. The conference version probably cited what you needed to build your argument quickly. For a journal submission, reviewers will expect you to engage with a wider body of work — including recent papers that may have appeared since you submitted the conference abstract.
• Add robustness checks. Almost every set of reviewer comments on an economics or finance paper asks for additional specifications, alternative samples, or different estimation approaches. Anticipate this. Build in at least two or three robustness tests before you submit, not after.
• Strengthen the methodology section. Conference audiences will accept a condensed methods section. A double-blind peer review panel will not. Spell out your identification strategy, data sources, sample construction decisions, and any assumptions that could be challenged.
• Revise for journal formatting. Manuscript formatting requirements vary significantly. Some journals follow APA, others use house styles. Check word limits, reference formats, table and figure submission specs. A submission portal will often reject technically non-compliant files before a human even reads them.
• Run a plagiarism check on the full manuscript — including sections you’ve carried over from the conference paper. Self-plagiarism is a real issue if you’re reproducing large blocks of your own previously published text without disclosure. Tools like iThenticate are widely used for this.

If your conference paper went through a formal double-blind peer review, you already have reviewer comments. Use them. Treat those comments as a free first round of peer review for your journal submission. Address every substantive point, even if the reviewers were wrong — explain your reasoning rather than ignoring the concern.

Top Economics and Finance Journals vs. Conferences — Which Should You Choose and When

This depends heavily on where you are in your career and what you’re trying to achieve.

For PhD students: Conference first, journal second — almost always. You need feedback before committing to a lengthy revision-submission cycle at a major journal. Presenting at an economics conference or finance conference gives you structured criticism from people who work in your area. That feedback often fundamentally changes the paper.

For early-career researchers building a CV: Both matter, but differently. Conference proceedings listed in Scopus or Web of Science do count as indexed publications and can strengthen a tenure-track application, especially in regions or institutions where output volume matters alongside quality. That said, a publication in a journal with a strong ABDC listing — A* or A — carries disproportionately more weight in most hiring decisions.

For experienced researchers: The conference is often used strategically — to get visibility, test a controversial argument, or network with co-authors and editors. The journal publication is the goal.

A practical point that often gets overlooked: track match matters. Submitting a behavioral finance paper to a conference with a macro-heavy program, or pitching a narrow institutional economics paper to a generalist finance journal, wastes time on both ends. Read the conference program from the previous two or three years. Look at the last five issues of the journal you’re targeting. If your paper doesn’t clearly fit, move on to a better match rather than hoping someone will make an exception.

Journal publication timelines in top economics and finance outlets are long — 12 to 24 months from submission to acceptance is not unusual, and that’s before accounting for revision submission cycles. Conferences run on a much faster clock, often returning decisions within 6 to 10 weeks of abstract submission. For researchers under publication pressure, that speed difference is real and worth factoring into your plan.

The journal version of a conference paper doesn’t need to be completely unrecognizable from the original. The core argument, the data, the main results — these are yours. What changes is the depth, the rigor of the framing, and the engagement with the literature. You’re not starting over. You’re building on what the conference process already validated.

Special Advice for Early-Career Researchers and PhD Students

If you’re a PhD student or early-career researcher submitting to an economics or finance conference for the first time, the process feels more complicated than it actually is. Here’s what you need to know that most guides won’t tell you directly.

Your First Conference Paper Doesn’t Need to Be Perfect

It needs to be good enough to get accepted and generate useful feedback. That’s it. Many PhD students delay submitting because they’re waiting until the paper is “ready.” It’s never fully ready. Submit a solid working paper with a clear research question, credible methodology, and results you can defend. The conference peer review — especially double-blind peer review — will tell you what’s missing.

A rejected abstract isn’t a failure. It’s data. Read the reviewer comments carefully. Sometimes a rejection with feedback is worth more than an acceptance without any.

Choose Conferences That Match Your Stage

Don’t start with the biggest names in your field. A huge annual economics conference with thousands of attendees isn’t necessarily the best fit for a first submission. Look for workshops attached to major conferences, doctoral colloquiums, or smaller regional conferences in your specific subfield. The track match matters enormously — a finance paper on credit risk submitted to a macro track will struggle regardless of quality.

Check whether the conference appears in reputable indexing systems like Scopus or Web of Science, or whether its proceedings are listed under a recognized ABDC listing category. That said, don’t obsess over indexing for your very first paper. Getting feedback and presentation experience has real value even from a modestly indexed event.

Predatory Conferences Are Targeting You Specifically

You will receive emails. They will look official. They’ll mention “international” and “indexed” and “peer-reviewed” in every sentence. Predatory conference organizers specifically target early-career researchers and PhD students because they’re easier to attract with flattering language and faster acceptance timelines.

Red flags: no clear program committee, vague indexing claims, acceptance within 48 hours of abstract submission, registration fee demanded immediately before any review, and no traceable history of past proceedings. If the conference proceedings don’t show up anywhere in Scopus or Web of Science when you search, that tells you something.

Abstract Submission Is Your First Test

Write your abstract before you write the full paper. Seriously. Drafting a 250–300 word abstract that clearly states your question, method, and contribution forces you to know what your paper actually argues. A lot of PhD students discover mid-abstract that their argument isn’t as clear as they thought.

Most submission portals ask for keywords, JEL classification codes for economics papers, and sometimes a short bio. Have these ready. Missing submission requirements is an embarrassingly avoidable reason to get desk-rejected.

Run a Plagiarism Check Before You Submit Anything

This applies especially if your conference paper draws heavily on your thesis chapters. Many universities run plagiarism checks on submitted theses, but conference papers sit in a different pipeline. Some conferences run their own checks; some don’t. Either way, run one yourself before submitting. Self-plagiarism — reusing large blocks of your own previous text without disclosure — is a real issue, not a technicality.

Know What You’re Paying For

Registration fees for conferences can run anywhere from $200 to $800 USD for in-person attendance at a standard academic economics or finance conference. Some conferences waive or reduce the fee for PhD students — it’s always worth emailing the organizing committee to ask. Don’t assume. Some organizers have a set student rate that isn’t prominently advertised on the submission portal.

Be cautious about conferences where the only fee structure involves paying before acceptance. Legitimate conferences typically don’t ask for registration fees until after your paper has been accepted.

Manuscript Formatting Takes Longer Than You Expect

Budget time for it. Most economics and finance conferences specify a page limit, citation style, font, and margin requirements. Some use a template; some just list requirements in the call for papers. Read the formatting guidelines before you write, not after. Reformatting a 30-page paper from APA to Chicago author-date the night before the deadline is unpleasant.

If you’re submitting to a conference with open access proceedings, check whether the final formatted version will be publicly indexed. That matters when you later write the expanded journal version — you’ll want to know what’s already publicly visible.

Use the Presentation as a Learning Tool

Whether you’re doing an oral presentation or a poster presentation, the Q&A is where the real value is. People will ask questions your supervisors never asked. Some questions will expose gaps. Some will give you ideas for the journal version. Write them down immediately after your session ends — don’t trust your memory.

If you’re doing an oral presentation, practice the timing out loud at least twice. Most 15-minute slots run over for first-time presenters. Getting cut off mid-results section is avoidable with one rehearsal.

The Conference Paper Is a Starting Point, Not the Destination

For PhD students especially, the conference paper feeds into the journal version. They’re not the same document. The conference version is typically shorter, sometimes preliminary, and serves to establish your presence in a research conversation. The journal version — the one that goes through proper manuscript review at a journal indexed in Scopus or Web of Science — is what carries long-term weight.

Don’t sit on the revision after the conference. Reviewer comments go stale in your memory faster than you think. Aim to submit a revision submission or the journal version within three to six months of the conference. That timeline is realistic and keeps the research momentum going.

FAQ

Can I submit the same paper to a conference and a journal at the same time?

Generally, no. Most journals have a strict policy against simultaneous submission. If your paper is under review at a conference and you submit it to a journal at the same time without disclosing that, you risk rejection from both — and in some cases, a formal misconduct flag. The safe move is to wait for the conference review outcome, present the paper, then revise and submit the journal version. Some journals explicitly allow conference papers as a starting point, but they expect a substantially expanded manuscript, not a copy-paste job.

Does publishing in conference proceedings count as a “real” publication on my CV?

Yes — with caveats. A conference paper indexed in Scopus or Web of Science carries real weight, especially for early-career researchers and PhD students building their publication record. A paper that appears only in an unindexed PDF on the conference website carries much less. Check the indexing status before you submit, not after.

How do I know if a conference is predatory?

A few reliable signals. If the conference emails you out of nowhere with an acceptance before you’ve even submitted an abstract, that’s a red flag. Check whether the proceedings are indexed in Scopus, Web of Science, or a recognised database. Look for an ABDC listing for the associated journal, if there is one. Search the conference name plus “predatory” or “scam” and read what comes up on forums and researcher communities. Legitimate economics and finance conferences have a proper double-blind peer review process, a clear programme committee, and a history you can verify.

What’s the difference between an oral presentation and a poster presentation?

An oral presentation means you stand at the front of a room, deliver your paper in 15–20 minutes, and take questions. Poster presentations involve printing your research on a large-format poster and discussing it one-on-one with attendees during a dedicated session. Neither is inherently inferior — poster sessions at major economics conferences can generate excellent feedback and connections. Some conferences let you indicate a preference during submission; others assign the format based on reviewer scores or track fit.

My abstract was accepted but my full paper was rejected. What now?

It happens. Reviewers sometimes find that a full paper doesn’t deliver on what the abstract promised — weak methodology, thin literature review, or results that don’t hold up. Read the reviewer comments carefully. If the feedback is substantive and actionable, revise and resubmit to the next suitable conference. If the comments are vague or contradictory, the paper might be better served going straight to a journal after revision. Don’t shelve it.

Do I need to pay a registration fee even if I’m only attending, not presenting?

Usually yes, though the fee structure differs by conference. Presenters almost always pay a registration fee as a condition of having their paper included in the proceedings. Attendees who aren’t presenting typically pay a separate, sometimes lower, rate. Some conferences offer student or early-career discounts — these are worth applying for, as full registration fees at major finance conferences can run from $400 to over $1,000.

Can I run a plagiarism check on my own paper before submission?

Yes, and you should. Many submission portals now run automatic plagiarism checks on upload, so it’s better to know your similarity score before the system flags it. Use whatever tool your institution provides access to. Self-citation and quoting your own previous work without proper attribution can contribute to a high similarity score — so make sure your citations are accurate and your paraphrasing is genuine.

Is open access required for conference proceedings?

Not always, but it’s becoming more common. Some conferences publish their proceedings through open access platforms as a condition of indexing. Others give authors the option to pay an additional fee for open access. If you’re funded by a grant body that mandates open access output, check whether the conference’s proceedings arrangement satisfies that requirement before you submit.

How long should I wait before submitting a journal version of my conference paper?

There’s no universal rule, but a reasonable approach is to wait until after you’ve presented — the feedback you receive from the audience and discussants can genuinely improve the paper. Then give yourself time to expand the manuscript, strengthen the empirical sections, and engage more deeply with the literature. A journal version should typically be 30–50% longer and more developed than the conference paper. Rushing this stage is one of the most common mistakes researchers make.

What does “track match” mean when submitting to a conference?

Most large economics and finance conferences are divided into thematic tracks — monetary policy, behavioural finance, development economics, corporate governance, and so on. When you submit, you choose the track that best fits your paper. Reviewers assigned to that track are specialists in that area. If your paper ends up in the wrong track, reviewers may lack the context to evaluate it fairly, or your abstract may simply be declined at the screening stage. Read the track descriptions carefully and match your paper to the one where it genuinely belongs, not the one with the shortest submission queue.

Final Words — Your Roadmap to Your First Conference Publication

Getting your first paper into an economics or finance conference isn’t a mystery. It’s a process. A slow, sometimes frustrating one — but entirely learnable.

Here’s the honest summary: most rejections early in a research career happen not because the work is bad, but because something procedural went wrong. Wrong conference track. Abstract that didn’t match the scope. Formatting that ignored the submission portal’s requirements. These are fixable problems.

Start with the conference selection. Check the indexing — Scopus, Web of Science, or the ABDC listing depending on your field and institution’s requirements. One hour of verification upfront saves months of wasted effort. If a conference has no clear editorial board, no traceable proceedings history, and pushes you toward fast acceptance, treat it as a predatory conference and walk away.

Your abstract submission is your first real filter. Keep it tight. Most economics conferences want a clear research question, a brief method, and your main finding — all inside 250 to 300 words. Don’t save the interesting part for the full paper. Put the finding in the abstract.

When the double-blind peer review comes back with reviewer comments, resist the urge to argue. Respond to every point. If you disagree with a reviewer, say so clearly and explain why. That’s a revision submission, not a negotiation. Reviewers generally respect a well-reasoned pushback more than passive compliance.

Your manuscript formatting matters more than it should. Download the template. Use it from the start. Reformatting a finished paper to match conference requirements is painful work you can avoid entirely.

On costs: registration fees for serious finance and economics conferences typically run between $300 and $800 USD. Budget for this early, especially if you’re a PhD student or early-career researcher without institutional funding. Some conferences offer fee waivers — ask directly, before you submit.

After your paper appears in the conference proceedings, that’s not the end. It’s a checkpoint. The journal version needs to go substantially further — more data, a deeper literature review, a fully developed contribution. Reviewers at journals will expect it.

The oral presentation or poster presentation slot is also not a formality. It’s where you get the sharpest feedback of the whole process. Attend other sessions. Talk to people. That conversation at the coffee break has started more than a few research collaborations and journal co-authorships.

One last thing. The open access question will come up when your proceedings are published. Know your institution’s policy before you sign anything. Some funding bodies require open access deposit within a specific window. Check this before the deadline, not after.

The path from conference paper to journal publication takes time. Usually a year or more from first submission to print. That’s normal. Keep working on the next paper while the first one moves through the system.

You don’t need a perfect paper to start. You need a good enough paper submitted to the right place, formatted correctly, with a clear argument. Everything else is iteration.