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Finding Conference Papers

Tips for University of Leicester Researchers

Conference papers can be tricky to find as there is no standard way of publishing or indexing them. They might be published as online conference papers, as articles within a journal or as books of conference proceedings.


Databases that contain full text conference papers
The databases listed below can be found by visiting our A-Z of Databases pages or the My Subject pages on the library homepage.
  • Library All Search includes conference papers from a number of sources. You can filter your search results by conference proceeding.
  • ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) Digital Library includes access to some of their conference proceedings. Search the ACM Digital Library site to check for access.
  • IEEE Xplore Digital Library (IEEE/IET Electronic Library) includes the full text of all IEEE and IET conferences from 1988 onwards.
  • ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) includes access to the full text of some conferences. You can search for them by limiting your search to Publications: ‘Collected Works – Proceedings’.
  • Lecture Notes in Computer Science publishes conference proceedings as books within the series. We have access to LNCS from 1973 onwards.
  • Lyell Collection provides access to conferences published by the Geological Society of London

Databases that index conference papers
  • Specialist literature databases provided by the library, which can be accessed via the My Subject tab.
  • Literature databases that cover a wide range of subjects such as Web of Science, Scopus and ZETOC which can be accessed via the Databases A-Z pages.
  • Google Scholar includes conference papers from specific publishers and open access resources.

Searching for conference proceedings as books
If you cannot find the full text of a conference paper online then the conference proceedings might have been published as a book.
  • Use the Library All Search to search for the title of the conference (not the title of the conference paper).

Obtaining Conference Papers
  • If the library does not have access to a conference paper you are interested in then request a copy via Document Supply.

Other options and finding conference presentations
Not all conference presentations are published as full conference papers or proceedings.
  • At various intervals after the conference check the conference website to see if they have made presentations/papers/proceedings freely available.
  •  Find the presenter’s/author’s website and see if they have made their paper/presentations available.
  •  Some authors make their work available via their institutional repository, like the Leicester Research Archive, or via commercial sites such as ResearchGate and Academia.
  • Contact the author directly and request a copy of the presentation/paper.



For further help finding conference proceedings please contact: librarians@le.ac.uk

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