PEER REVIEW OF CONFERENCE PAPERS: CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AUTHORS AND THE PAPERS

A conference offers researchers the service of spreading innovations because it is a platform for constructive discussion, interchange of new ideas, new joint projects, etc., both within and outside the sessions. However, an interesting debate is presented by the establishment of the previous procedures of evaluation of researchers’ communications due to the fact that there are often doubts among the members of the organising committees and conference participants around whether these evaluations are capable of detecting the relevance of studies which will later have an important impact on the field. Traditionally, the literature finds weaknesses in the peer review system in terms of papers published in journals. To date there has been very little attention given to this weakness in the field of conferences. This study examines the determinant factors of peer evaluations of conference communications through the characteristics of the authors and the papers. It also analyses the relationship between the degree of acceptance/rejection of communications and the quality of subsequent publications resulting from these communications. The results obtained in a marketing conference show that a quantitative approach, bibliographical references and footnotes influence the peer evaluations of communications. Moreover, the study shows that accepted communications are subsequently published in higher quality journals.