Technical papers

Journal paper, conference paper, seminar paper, the difference?

What is the difference between them?

I will answer the question above with my limited knowledge on the matter...

Conference papers -- is the technical paper submitted after attending a conference. The conference standard may vary from from a well recognised conference to a just-attend-me conference. Reputable conferences are well known to each discipline of research, common ones are the SPIE, IEEE conferences. However small conferences can also be highly sought as it gathers the researchers in a very specific field to discuss and debate the current issues. For example, I find the conference SIOE (don't remember the full name) in Cardiff is a good one for laser characterisation people. The small community makes it a friendly atmosphere for young researchers as well as professors to chat and discuss. (however, too friendly atmosphere is not nice either, well at least to me, as u have to sit with professors and pretending that you are 'into' what they are discussing... while your heart just want to have a rest in the hotel)

Conference papers are peer reviewed papers but the scrutiny of the reviewing depending on how much they want you to go for their conference. sometimes conferences just want to make money hence will just accept whatever you send then with ammendments of course. If the conference is a popular one, then it will be reviewed more rigorously. However, generally the reviewing of a conference paper less than a journal paper.

Journal Paper... its a technical paper which sometimes called a letter if its length is 3 pages or shorter. A full journal paper can be as long as you want but normally, after 8 pages, the publisher will charge you more per page. Journal paper can be rated by its impact factor. Impact factor is a measure of how much the papers in that journal being cited. A very high impact factor journal is for example the Nature journal, however, normally there involves extremely fundamental sciences. For Electronic and Electrical Engineering, the very good journal to send your paper to is Applied Physics Letters (APL), the Journal of Applied Physics (JAP), IEEE journals, Physical Review (this is if your work is nearly a physics work). How to choose where to submit? Well, normally you will check where does your field community submitted their papers? Then go for that journal because, it will mean that it is more likely for people in your field to find your papers and cite them.

However, sumitting and reviewing of journal papers can take very long time depending on which journal you send to. Plus i guess depends on rizq, because, there is this one paper we send to JAP, after two months still no news from them, apparently they are having a tough time finding a reviewer to review the paper. Its because its involving two different discipilines and interlinking between them, plus its very rare for people tolook at dark current of laser devices carefully. But generally JAP is faster than IEEE journals. The fastest is APL where normally people send short paper on the research and criteria is that is the latest news on the field and just letting the community knows about the progress. APL normally has the highest impact factor due to its nature being the first place to plublish a breakthrough.

Seminar paper? Its ranking is less than conference and journal...not many researchers go for this...

Ok, hope it is benefial for you...am sure K Yati who's phD on this topic can comment more :)