STVR Policy Extending Conference Papers to Journal Submissions

A common research dissemination practice is to expand a conference paper into a journal submission. This policy defines how the extension should be handled.

Amount of Extension

The usual rule of thumb is taken from common publisher guidelines: A new paper should have at least 30% significant new material. The new material is intended to be technical contribution, rather than background, related work, and motivation. The 30% is judged by the editors and reviewers. Note that this does not allow several conference papers to be combined into one journal paper—all results were previously published.

Citing the Conference Paper

The journal submission should follow the following rules:

  1. The journal version must include a citation to the conference paper.
  2. The journal version must discuss the conference paper and summarize the additional technical contributions. This discussion should normally be included in the introduction and does not necessarily need to be long.
  3. Omitting this information is not grounds for rejection. Although adding this content is relatively minor, the reviewers need to recheck the paper to judge whether the paper contains enough new material. Therefore omitting this information will usually result in a major revision.

For more details, please see the editorial in the June 2016 issue of STVR.

Jeff Offutt and Rob Hierons
STVR Editors-in-Chief
May 2016