Conference or Journal? How to Decide Where to Submit
For a lot of results, the choice between a conference and a journal isn’t obvious, both are legitimate venues, and the right answer depends more on your field’s norms, your timeline, and what stage the work is at than on any universal rule. Understanding the full range of factors involved helps make this decision deliberately rather than by habit or convenience.
Check what your field actually treats as the primary venue
In computer science and related fields, top conferences often carry weight equal to or greater than journals, with fast-moving areas like machine learning treating conference proceedings as the main publication record. In most other sciences and in the humanities, journals remain the primary venue and conferences function more as a place to present and get feedback before journal submission. Knowing which convention applies to your field changes the entire calculation.
Timeline pressure points toward conferences
Conference review cycles are typically measured in weeks to a few months, against journal timelines that can run six months to over a year for a first decision, sometimes longer with multiple rounds of revision. If you’re working against a graduation deadline, a grant renewal, or a fast-moving competitive area, a conference gets a result into the record faster.
Consider how finished the work actually is
Early or preliminary results, or work you want feedback on before committing to a final direction, often fit a conference better, the format and page limits are built for a more contained contribution. A comprehensive, fully worked result with extensive validation is usually a stronger fit for a journal’s depth, even if it takes longer to place.
Think about who you actually want reading it first
A conference puts your work in front of a concentrated, engaged, immediate audience, useful if the direct feedback and networking matter as much as the eventual citation record. A journal reaches a more distributed, ongoing readership over a longer period, which matters more for work aimed at long-term impact than immediate discussion.
Institutional and career-stage considerations should factor into the decision too
Your specific institution’s tenure and promotion evaluation criteria, and where you are in your career, discussed in more depth in our guide on using conferences strategically at each career stage, should genuinely inform this decision rather than defaulting purely to field convention.
Remember it’s often not an either-or choice
In fields where journals are the primary venue, presenting early findings at a conference and later publishing the fully developed version as a journal article, see our guide on turning a conference paper into a journal article, is a well-established path that gets you both the early feedback and the long-term publication record, provided the target journal’s policy on prior conference publication allows it.
A decision-making checklist
- Field-specific convention confirmed regarding primary venue prestige
- Timeline pressure weighed honestly against your actual deadline constraints
- The work’s completeness and maturity assessed realistically
- Your specific institutional evaluation criteria and career stage factored in
- The two-step path, conference then journal, considered rather than assuming it’s purely either-or
Frequently asked questions
Is it ever better to skip conferences entirely and go straight to a journal?
Yes, particularly in fields where conferences serve mainly a networking function and journals are unambiguously the primary publication record, or for fully mature, comprehensive results.
How do I know which convention my specific subfield follows?
Look at where senior, well-regarded researchers in your specific area actually publish their flagship results, this is often more reliable than general field-level assumptions.
Can presenting at a conference hurt my chances with a later journal submission?
Generally not, if handled transparently and per the target journal’s specific policy on prior conference publication, this is a well-established and accepted practice in most fields that use it.