The Importance of Conference Proceedings in Research Evaluation: a Methodology for Assessing Conference Impact

Conferences are an essential tool for scientific communication. In disciplines such as Computer Science the majority of original research results are published in conference proceedings. In this study, we have analyzed the role of conference proceedings in various disciplines and propose an alternative approach to research evaluation based on conference proceedings sources indexed in Scopus and Scimago Journal Rank (SJR). This allows one to categorize conference proceedings in quartiles Q1 - Q4 by analogy with SJR journal quartiles. Out of 171 conference proceedings sources analyzed, 38 conference proceedings in Engineering (45% of the list) and 23 in Computer Science (32% of the list) have an SJR level corresponding to the first quartile journals in these areas, which emphasizes the exceptional importance of conferences in these disciplines. The comparison of this bibliometric-driven ranking with the expert-driven CORE ranking in Computer Science showed a 62% overlap, as well as a significant average rank correlation of the category distribution.