This morning I read the Q&A with the authors of the new book “Social Knowledge in the Making” on Inside Higher Ed.

One thing that caught my eye that pertains to supporting faculty even more than the fact that someone has figured out that it might be important to do to the social sciences what Science and Technology Studies (STS) did (is doing) to the physical sciences–understanding the creation of knowledge–is what they learned about academic conferences.

They discovered “our research subject was using academic conferences as a key vehicle for getting his work done, promising several months ahead of time that he would give a conference presentation on a paper that at that point consisted of little more than a few notes, and then using the looming deadline to force himself to set aside his many other obligations in order to actually make headway with the project.” They go on to say that conferences might be under appreciated in terms of their role in helping get papers done.

Have you ever submitted an abstract before the paper is done to a conference? Do you recommend it or not?

(note: the book has other interesting points as well!)