Citing conference or pre-read workshop papers?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread a reader asks:

Is it permissible to cite a talk you went to at a conference, even if, as far as you know, no paper version of that talk exists? How about a paper from a preread workshop? Does it matter the career stage - are the norms different if you're citing a grad student vs. someone very famous? Does it matter if you're citing in agreement or objecting to the view? Assume you're writing with the intent of submitting to journals.

Good questions. I've definitely seen conference papers cited before, as they have been peer-reviewed and presented publicly. But I'm not sure what the norms are, and workshop papers definitely seem different to me, as a workshop seems to me more like "private circulation" of a work-in-progress than a finished paper. I also wonder whether a person's professional standing makes a difference. I'd definitely be wary of citing an unpublished work by a grad-student, at least without asking first. But a talk by a well-known person at an APA? Not sure. In general, my attitude is, if there is any doubt, always defer to asking the author.

What do readers think?

Comments

[Bill Vanderburgh]

I generally think of citation as serving two purposes. One, to give credit to others for their ideas that we use in our own work (i.e., to avoid plagiarism). Two, as an authoritative statement of some claim, position, or conclusion (i.e., as evidence in an argument). If you got an idea from someone else, you should say so--on that principle, go ahead and cite the unpublished work. However, unpublished talks lack the authority that accrues to peer reviewed journal articles, and so are less useful for the evidential purpose.

Then we get into issues of "can" and "should": You *can* cite any public performance (spoken, written, etc.) and you can do so without seeking the author's permission. Whether you *should* is a matter of context. There might be spoken or unspoken rules in a workshop, for example. Some authors might perceive it as an unfriendly thing to cite their unfinished work. Etc. I would be especially careful when dealing with the work of the most vulnerable members of our profession, grad students and junior scholars. In those cases, I would always ask first. It could be a good thing for them to get credit, but they might be harmed by being scooped in print.

[James]

Please don’t ever do this without the author’s permission. If an idea has already appeared in print, even if it’s attributed to someone other than the author of the paper in which ir appears, it can be harder to publish the idea.

[AnonClam]

Yeah I don't really understand why someone wants to cite unpublished workshop papers. These are not published so what are you citing exactly? That someone has written down some points on a piece of paper somewhere? This doesn't mean a lot in general and the person could not publish these ideas, and these ideas have not gone through peer review. So it's not clear to me that this is an appropriate target. I would have thought that publishing an article that discusses someone else should engage their published (vetted, refereed) work since that is more in the public, scholarly domain.

[Knievel Deceiver]

I'll chime in as evil deceiver's advocate. Sometimes graduate students are in a position to critique the unpublished work of their advisors or committee members. This might be part of (but not the entirety of) the graduate's dissertation, etc. It strikes me that, assuming other conditions are met (like explicit permission), it can be OK sometimes.

That being said, I don't think it should be a substantive part of one's own manuscript, since it also makes it difficult for reviewers to know whether you are outlining the unpublished arguments charitably.

This also presents a wholly different issue of having 'inside knowledge' and ability to potentially 'scoop' others by having early access to someone's arguments/responses. But is that much different from our current workshop model?

[Santa Monica]

I think even if it’s possible, it’s weaker dialectically than citing published work—weaker support by precedent, less interesting point of contention. For reasons: see comments above.