By Lilian H. Hill
Your conference proposal was accepted, and even better, your presentation was well received. Presenting at a conference is a significant milestone in your scholarly journey. While it certainly deserves a place on your CV, it can also serve as the springboard for a more lasting and impactful contribution to your field. One of the most effective ways to amplify your research is to revise and publish your conference paper as a journal article.
Conference presentations allow for early sharing of ideas and feedback. In contrast, journal articles require greater rigor, depth, and polish. If you’re wondering how to navigate this transition, the following guide outlines each step of the process.
1. Analyze the Feedback you Received
If your presentation generated questions, suggestions, or critiques, consider it a valuable opportunity for learning and improvement. Attendees might have encouraged you to publish or offered ideas for strengthening your work. Make a habit of recording these insights soon after the presentation, while details are fresh. Later, you can revisit your notes to assess which ideas might help refine your paper. (The word paper is used intentionally; your work only becomes an article once it is published.)
2. Reassess Your Purpose and Audience
Conference papers are often written for immediate presentation, tailored to a specific event and its audience. Journals, by contrast, have broader readerships and higher expectations for clarity, evidence, and theoretical grounding. Begin by asking:
- What is the core argument or insight of my paper?
- How does this contribution speak to current conversations in the field?
- Who is the target audience for this journal article?
3. Expand the Literature Review
Conference papers often assume shared knowledge among attendees and therefore summarize only the most essential sources. A journal article, by contrast, must situate your study within a well-developed scholarly context. Deepen your literature review to demonstrate how your work addresses gaps or builds on existing research.
4. Strengthen Your Methodology
If your conference paper describes original research, reviewers will expect more detail about your research design, data collection, and analysis. Be transparent and thorough. Ensure that your methodological choices are justified and that readers can assess the trustworthiness of your findings. Journal editors and peer reviewers will examine your methods to determine if they are robust and if the resulting research paper is worth publishing.
5. Refine Your Argument
Journal articles typically demand a clearer line of reasoning than oral presentations. Strengthen your argument by explicitly stating your purpose, theoretical framework, and point of view, and supporting it with organized, well-developed evidence. Look for areas where your ideas could be clarified, expanded, or made more persuasive.
6. Revise Structure and Tone
Conference papers are often time-constrained and written in a conversational style. A journal article requires a well-organized structure, featuring clear headings and smooth transitions. Move from spoken-word cues to academic writing conventions. Adopt a tone that is professional, evidence-based, and reflective of scholarly discourse, appropriate to your field. Fortunately, research papers have a somewhat standardized structure, although slight variances may occur due to the type of research and your academic discipline. This outline provides you with clear guidance about how to organize the story of your research:
• Title
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Literature Review
• Methodology
• Findings (qualitative) or Results (quantitative)
• Discussion
• Conclusion
• References
• Appendices, if needed
7. Choose the Right Journal
Select a journal that aligns with your topic, methodology, and audience. You can consult with mentors and colleagues who have experience in publishing. Also, consider the publications you used in your literature review. If many of your sources were published in the same journals, it is worth considering them for publishing your work. You can also locate relevant journals through Journalytics Academic (Cabells), a searchable database with comprehensive information about academic journals.
Once you have identified possible journals, you need to investigate them. Almost all academic journals maintain websites that provide information about their publication scope, which outlines the specific topics, disciplines, methodologies, and types of content published. It defines the journal’s academic focus and helps authors determine whether their work is a good fit. The scope also typically identifies the intended audience (e.g., scholars, practitioners, policymakers) and may indicate whether the journal is interdisciplinary, regional, or global in scope.
Consider whether your work aligns with the journal’s aims and whether you are comfortable with the journal’s review process and publication model (open access vs. subscription, for example). Be sure that your research paper fits the scope and writing guidelines required by your selected journal. Journal editors will quickly reject manuscripts that are out of scope or fail to meet writing guidelines. Please do not exceed the maximum length the journal stipulates; editors receiving manuscripts that greatly exceed length requirements may reject them without reading.
8. Avoid Predatory Journals
Predatory journals are publications that exploit the open-access model of academic publishing by charging authors fees without providing legitimate editorial and peer review services. These journals lack transparency, publish low-quality or unvetted research, and exist primarily to generate profit rather than advance scholarship. They may mimic the appearance of reputable journals but fail to meet accepted standards of academic integrity and scholarly publishing. Work published in a predatory journal is not recognized as legitimate by hiring committees, tenure review boards, or funding agencies. This can waste your time, damage your scholarly reputation, and diminish the perceived quality of your research.
9. Seek Feedback Before Submission
Before submitting your research paper, ask colleagues or mentors for feedback. A fresh pair of eyes can help identify unclear sections, overlooked sources, or logical inconsistencies. But choose your reviewers carefully. They need to be:
· familiar with the type of research used in your research paper
· knowledgeable in your academic field
· kind, constructive, and honest
· respectful of your timeline
Upon receiving feedback, respond with grace and gratitude, and thoughtfully incorporate the suggested revisions into your manuscript before submission. Keep in mind that this is your paper, so you have the discretion to choose which feedback to incorporate thoughtfully.
10. Submit Your Paper
Most journals require electronic submission of manuscripts through their designated online portals. It is essential to follow the submission guidelines carefully, which typically include providing a title, abstract, full manuscript, references, tables, and figures, a funding disclosure, brief author bios, and a conflict of interest statement. Author names, including any co-authors, should appear only on a separate title page and not within the main manuscript. To facilitate anonymous peer review (also called blind peer review), the manuscript must be anonymized. Avoid including self-identifying details such as citations of your publications, institutional affiliations, or program names. When citing your previous work, use the placeholder ‘Author, 2025,’ and do the same in the reference list. Once your manuscript is accepted, these placeholders can be replaced with the appropriate identifying information during the copyediting stage.
You should not submit the same paper to multiple journals at the same time because it violates ethical standards in scholarly publishing. Most journals explicitly require that submissions are not under consideration elsewhere, and violating this policy can lead to retraction, reputational damage, or even blacklisting by journals. These events would severely damage your career.
11. Wait for a Response
Patience is crucial in the journal submission process. Once editors determine that a paper is suitable for peer review, they must find qualified reviewers with relevant expertise, a task that can take several weeks. Most reviewers are university faculty who are often overextended and may decline invitations. Those who accept typically have a month or more to complete their reviews, but delays are common due to professional and personal responsibilities. As a result, a wait of three to six months for a response is normal. You can generally expect acknowledgment of submission within a few days to two weeks, a desk review in two to four weeks, and peer review to take one to three months. If no decision has been communicated to you after six months, it is appropriate to send a courteous inquiry to the editor. Journals usually welcome respectful follow-up.
12. Understand the Editorial Decision
After peer review, journal editors typically respond to submissions with one of the following decisions:
- Accept
- Conditional Accept (requiring minor revisions)
- Revise and Resubmit (requiring substantial revisions)
- Reject
- Reject-out-of-Scope
While an "Accept" decision is ideal, more commonly you’ll receive a “Conditional Accept” or a “Revise and Resubmit.” These outcomes may seem discouraging, but they are good news. They indicate that the editors and reviewers value your work and are inviting you to refine it for potential publication. If a journal rejects your paper, respond with professionalism and use the experience as a learning opportunity. Keep in mind that rejection is a standard part of academic publishing, not a reflection of your worth as a scholar. Resilience, revision, and thoughtful resubmission are essential to eventual success.
13. Prepare for Peer Review
Manuscripts are rarely accepted without revisions. Take advantage of the editorial reviews you received to revise and resubmit your paper. Use reviewer comments to improve the clarity, rigor, and relevance of your article. Approach feedback with humility and discernment. Engage constructively even if critiques are sharp. If you disagree with the reviewers’ comments, you can contact the journal editor with a well-reasoned explanation. Most journal articles go through multiple rounds of revisions before an “Accept” decision is reached.
Final Thoughts
Turning a conference paper into a journal article is both a practical step forward and a mark of scholarly growth. It requires you to move from presentation to publication, from idea-sharing to knowledge-building. With careful revision and thoughtful framing, your conference work can find a lasting place in the scholarly record.