Chicago Referencing – Conference Papers (Author-Date)

There are two major definitions of ‘conference’:

1. A meeting of people with a shared interest or profession
2. A type of pear

Unsurprisingly for an academic writing blog, we’re talking about the first kind here. One day, perhaps, the Chicago Manual of Style will finally add guidelines about fruit. And at that point, we will explore how to cite a conference pear in an essay.

For now, though, lets concentrate on how to cite conference papers with Chicago referencing.

In-Text Citations

In this case, we’re focusing on Chicago’s author-date referencing. As the name suggests, citing a source with this system involves giving the author’s name and a date of publication:

An apple a day keeps the doctor away (Cox 2007).

Here, for example, we see a paper by ‘Cox’, published in 2007. If the author is already named in the text, however, you only need to give the date in the citation.

In addition, if you are quoting a conference paper, you should also provide page numbers:

According to one expert, ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’ (Cox 2007, 24).

The number after the comma is the page where the quoted text comes from.

Reference List

In your reference list, full source information should be provided for all conference papers. The format here depends on whether you’re citing a published or unpublished paper.

For published papers (i.e. papers from published conference proceedings), the format is:

Surname, First Name. Year of Publication. ‘Title of Paper’. In Title of Published Proceedings, edited by Editor Name(s), page numbers. City of Publication: Publisher.

This will apply to most conference papers. However, you can sometimes find unpublished papers on university or conference websites. For these, the correct format is:

Surname, First Name. Year of Presentation. ‘Title of Paper’. Presented at Name, Location and Date of Conference.

Note that the name of the conference is not italicised here, unlike in the title of the published proceedings. In practice, then, we would list conference papers along the following lines:

Cox, Richard. 2007. ‘Apples and Pears: Medicinal Properties of Fruit’. In Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Fruiterers Convention, edited by G. Grocer, 20-35. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rivers, Thomas. 2011. ‘Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: Fruit and Sexuality in History’. Presented at Gardens and Nurseries Unlimited, London, England, 14-17 March.

The first entry above is for a published paper, while the second is for an unpublished paper.