Conference Papers and Prior Publication

It has been a long-standing policy of the American Society of Civil Engineers that material published in ASCE journals must not have been published elsewhere previously or subsequently, either by the authors or others. Authors are asked to affirm that no prior publication has occurred during submission of a manuscript for review. Moreover, authors are expected to provide citations for any material coming from an existing source and may be asked to furnish copies of papers or reports that seem similar in content.

A major issue involving prior publication is the distribution of manuscripts at conferences or over the Internet. Although it is reasonable to write a journal article that is based on a conference presentation, ASCE expects that the journal article be significantly different from any paper or report appearing in a published proceeding. “Significantly different” generally means that the journal article contains 50% new content with respect to that in the conference proceeding. This rule also applies to papers that have been published in proceedings of ASCE conferences.

The Transportation Research Board (TRB) traditionally distributed paper manuscripts to annual meeting attendees, and these papers were typically regarded as unpublished and were available for submission to peer-reviewed journals such as the ASCE journals or the Transportation Research Record. With the January 2011 annual meeting, the TRB moved to make the annual conference paper “compendium” available on the Internet to attendees and to anyone willing to pay an access fee. As a result, ASCE now regards the TRB Annual Meeting papers as having been published. These papers will not be considered for publication by ASCE without significant (50% different) changes. Authors who are submitting papers to the TRB may opt out of being included in the compendium. Doing so reserves the right to submit a paper to ASCE.

Although this note specifically refers to the TRB’s annual meeting, the policy is true for any conference that is publishing a proceeding. Papers that are posted online are considered published.

Prior publication and plagiarism are often difficult to assess. New papers may be revised in large part or extended in scope from prior publications. ASCE generally relies upon the authors to adhere to the society’s ethical guidelines regarding prior publication and plagiarism. However, software to compare manuscripts with material available on the Internet is now available and is being adopted by many publishers to aid in assessing the likelihood of prior publication or plagiarism. Authors can also use such software on their own to assess whether a paper is sufficiently different to avoid problems of prior publication.

Questions about this policy can be addressed to the ASCE Journal Editorial Office.