In last month’s Newsletter, ICA Conference & Membership Coordinator Emily Karsnak, with an eye toward the upcoming 1 November deadline for London 2013, highlighted some easy submission tips. In my first column as student board member, I want to extend that conversation to the context of our student members.

Submitting to an international conference can be unnerving. Many graduate students feel jittery, even, about submitting their work to forums such as ICA. How will my paper be received, they wonder? Will it be shot down by Dr. Well Known and what will it mean 5-6 years down the line, perhaps, when I’m applying for a job at his/her university, and s/he remembers my paper that paled in comparison to all those other excellent pieces?! ICA is often more selective in its acceptance rate, compared to other national and regional conferences, which might compound this fear. However, this line of thinking is largely circular and inevitably self-defeatist. Even though grad students would benefit greatly from the international networks and high-caliber research attending ICA would provide them, many of them are content to subscribe to its journals and read newsletters (like this one), rather than actively engaging with the ICA community, through forums such as our annual conference. Listen to me awhile, as I tell you WHY you should submit that paper you wrote for a grad seminar to ICA, and then, some easy ways to enhance your chances to get an “accept.”

Think about it in this way:

1. There is the very real possibility your work might get accepted, with all the thrill and accolades accompanying such great news.
2. The fact that your paper got accepted means there was definitely something exciting about it, so don’t feel insecure about how it “measures” up (or not) to the others on your panel. Instead, take it as a great opportunity to introduce yourself to your panel members and audience. The likelihood of your presentation getting a “bad” response is very, very remote. So, some 5-6 years later, if you do find yourself interviewing in front of Dr. Well Known, if s/he has attended your ICA presentation or sees it listed on your vita, there is a good chance that you will have helped your job prospects.
3. Not only are you likely to build bridges with other scholars in your field in other countries, but some of these bridges also turn into opportunities to write book chapters, review essays, and other publications. Although it’s often been said that “large” conferences are too jam-packed for meaningful contacts, I’ve found this to be less than true, at least at ICA. To the contrary, I’ve found scholars in the panels and Division receptions only too happy to introduce themselves, talk about their work, and ask me about mine.
4. London is a fantastic city to visit! Enough said!
5. Finally, if your paper does not make it past the review stage, you will still have got some excellent feedback to revise and submit to another conference (or perhaps ICA next year). A fresh set of eyes poring over your work is immensely helpful, especially since we tend to lose objectivity about our own work after sometime.

So, now that I’ve hopefully convinced you to submit, here are some quick “tips” to increase your chances of an acceptance.

1. Be aware of the submission rules. These include the word count, ensuring anonymity, and entering all required information. Emily’s column last month provided an excellent guide to the technical dos and don’ts, so I won’t go into further details here. You can also check out ICA’s online guidelines on submitting papers and panel proposals.
2. Know your paper. I mean, really know what your paper is about, its major contributions, the points it makes, and how it does that. To make the best decision of which division or interest group to submit to, you need to know this, and chances are, the last time you really looked at your paper was right before submitting it to the professor at the end of the semester.
3. Revisions are important. Very rarely do excellent class papers translate into conference “accept” letters, as is. Most of the time, they need to be tweaked in some way. This could involve rechecking or even rewriting the analysis, maybe including that additional statistical test (that you didn’t have the time for before submitting the paper to your professor) to make your findings more robust. It could mean drawing a link to some contemporary issue/event, enhancing the practical relevance of your piece. Or, it could be connecting your paper to the conference theme (e.g., “Challenging Communication Research” for London 2013). Note: This does not mean a superficial change for the heck of it (e.g., including the word “Challenging” in your title), but something that reflects a more meaningful connection with the theme.
4. Know the divisions and their chairs. Read the calls for papers from each Division and Interest Group, once you know your paper well enough, to decide where it will be best received. If you’re in doubt about whether your paper “fits” within a particular Division, emailing the chair is useful. Do NOT email them a copy of your paper; a few short lines on its subject will suffice.
5. Finally, edit your paper carefully, to address structural sense, logical coherence, typos and spelling or grammatical errors. To their credit, the reviewers at ICA are usually sensitive to varying skill levels in English, given the global make-up of our members. All the same, asking a colleague, friend or mentor to go over your piece before submitting helps correct any typos so that reviewers can engage with your piece more effectively. Most important, perhaps, is ensuring that your paper is logically and structurally sound, making sense for your reader.

I hope you’ve found this helpful, and are pulling up that paper now from last semester’s grad seminar to submit for London 2013!