Chicago Referencing – Citing a Conference Paper

Academic conferences are a great way to engage with cutting-edge research. But how should you cite a conference paper in your own work?

That depends on the system you’re using and whether the paper has been published. And in the case of Chicago referencing, it also depends on the version of the system used.

Author-Date Referencing (In-Text Citations)

The in-text citations for a conference paper are the same whether or not it has been published. This simply requires giving the surname of the author and the year of publication/presentation:

Airflows in urban environments are linked to architecture (West 2010).

The one difference between published and unpublished conference papers is that you should give page numbers when quoting a published paper:

One argument is that ‘tall buildings channel airflows in cities’ (West 2010, 187).

Citing an unpublished paper might sound unusual, but it can be handy if you’ve seen a presentation which hasn’t been published in conference proceedings.

Author-Date Referencing (Reference List)

When using author-date Chicago referencing, all cited conference papers should be included in a reference list at the end of your document. The format to use here for a published paper 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.

In practice, this would look something like the following:

West, Kevin. 2010. ‘Understanding Urban Airflows’. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of Windy Cities, edited by Oliva Winsome, 185-192. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

If the proceedings were only published online, meanwhile, you’d give a DOI or URL in place of the place of publication/publisher.

For an unpublished paper, the format is slightly different:

Surname, First Name. Year of Presentation. ‘Title of Paper’. Presented at Name of Conference, location and date of conference.

Consequently, an unpublished paper would appear in the reference list as follows:

West, Kevin. 2010. ‘Understanding Urban Airflows’. Presented at The 10th Annual Conference of Windy Cities, Illinois, Chicago, October 18-21.

Note that the name of the conference here is not italicised because it isn’t a published work.

Footnote Referencing (Footnote Citations)

With published conference papers, Chicago footnote referencing treats them as chapters in an edited book. As such, the first footnote citation for a paper would use the following format:

^n. Author’s Name, ‘Paper Title’, in Title of Proceedings, ed. Editor Name(s) (Place of Publication: Publisher, Year), page number(s) for cited section.

You can then shorten non-consecutive citations of the same paper to just the author’s surname, paper title and page numbers:

^1. Kevin West, ‘Understanding Urban Airflows’, in Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of Windy Cities, ed. Oliva Winsome (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2010), 190.
^2. Shirley Church, Landscape and Architecture (New York: Penguin Books), 288.
^3. West, ‘Understanding Urban Airflows’, 191-192.

For unpublished papers, the format to use is:

^n. Author’s Name, ‘Paper Title’ (paper presented at Name of Conference, location and date of conference).

This would therefore appear as follows:

^1. Kevin West, ‘Understanding Urban Airflows’ (paper presented at The 10th Annual Conference of Windy Cities, Illinois, Chicago, October 18-21, 2010).

Similar to published papers, you can shorten non-consecutive repeat citations to just the author’s surname and the title of the paper.

Footnote Referencing (Bibliography)

The formats in the bibliography for conference papers with footnote referencing are similar to those above, but with a few differences in the punctuation and position of the year.

A published conference paper would therefore appear in the bibliography as follows:

West, Kevin. ‘Understanding Urban Airflows’. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of Windy Cities, edited by Oliva Winsome, 185-192. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2010.

Meanwhile, you would list an unpublished version of the same paper as:

West, Kevin. ‘Understanding Urban Airflows’. Paper presented at The 10th Annual Conference of Windy Cities, Illinois, Chicago, October 18-21, 2010.