Why did my papers get repeatedly put on the last day and the last session of a conference?

Question

My paper got accepted normally (e.g., with neutral to positive reviewer rating) to a conference.

I have noticed that, I always get to present (oral or poster) on the last days of the conference, and worse, at the last session.

Predictably, I did not get a large audience, and got fewer questions/useful feedback compared to papers presented on the first, and second day of the conference.

Does that indicate (low) perception of my paper by the conference organizer?

It is almost as if they want to conceal my paper. The conferences are ranked typical B-level with ca. 50% acceptance rate.

What can I do?

Answer 1

Your question has just made me doubt any conference I have presented at - I have been in the last session so many, many times and I always considered it just bad luck (getting a talk in the first place was the exiting bit).

While some of the other answers have already given you a nice perspective regarding the considerations that many conference organizers may have had when they were putting together the schedule, let me also offer my perspective, having now organized multiple different conferences and symposia, big and small: in none of these cases have we put together the schedule based on whether we considered talks selected from abstracts to have lower or higher impact or significance. As an organizer, I want my last session to be as strong as the first, if possible, because nobody wants an empty room towards the end of the conference (what has happened therefore: putting an awesome keynote speaker or exciting invited talk at the end to make sure nobody heads home).

Even when picking best speaker awards I've often been in last minute hushed discussions as we considered a talk from one of the last sections without a coffee break in between the session and the actual award ceremony.

I do agree that it sucks to be on the last day because you lack the free conference wide exposure you might get by presenting on the first day, but there are other ways to put yourself out there: sit with people you don't know at breakfast/lunch/dinner, be active and introduce yourself to people at poster sessions etc. etc.

So, don't get worked up over it, don't read too much into it and just focus on the contents of your work and on genuinely getting to know people in your field.

Answer 2

How do conferences group papers?

(Based on my experience and therefore subjective)

Usually, the programming committee has a meeting to discuss referee reports. On rare occasion, last-minute reviews are being done by PC members to balance the fact that reviewers did not respond timely or in order to understand the review reports better. Before the meeting, the PC chair might divide the submissions into three groups: definitely accept, where the PC is expected to rubber-stamp this decision, definitely do not accept, for instance, because none of the three reviewers voted for a straight accept, or as desk-rejects, and the papers that ought to be discussed. In parallel, the number of papers to be selected is determined.

When the work is done, the Chair with or without help groups papers together by threads. Some papers will cluster naturally, and sometimes they will not, leading to "Odds and Ends" sessions. After the sessions have been determined, they get assigned to dates in the calendar. Even if there is no Best Paper award, the papers that according to the PC and the reviewers are or were candidates, have their session placed in the prime time, usually a session after the key-note talk. Everything else gets a spot assigned usually without much deliberation. Odds-and-ends sessions without a strong paper and without strong cohesion tend to get assigned last session in a day.

Now, big conferences like VLDB and those where the tracks are more independently organized work differently.

TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION:

It is unlikely that someone is out to get you, because the decision making process is too distributed for that to work easily. It might be a sequence of bad luck (statistically slumps are likely to occur) or it might be that your work does not cluster well with other work.

Unfortunately, the conference method of disseminating information has draw-backs, and you are suffering from one. If you look at the history, conferences started out much more as an exchange of ideas before the developed into the main dissemination method of Computer Science.

If conferences accept your papers, someone thinks your work is worth-while. However, even if you end up presenting in a prime spot, your audience tends to be already overwhelmed by the program and you might not get a substantially better reception.

Answer 3

I very much doubt that the organizers want to conceal your paper. If they thought that they would have rejected it.

I suspect that although it cleared the cutoff point for acceptance, the organizers thought it less interesting or more specialized than papers scheduled earlier. You might be able to infer that by looking at the rest of the schedule.

As for what to do? Approach other participants whose work touches yours. You may learn something; that may encourage them to come to your talk. Try harder to connect your work to questions people at that conference care about.

That said, congratulations on the acceptances.

Answer 4

It seems very unlikely that there is a conspiracy to bury your results at the end of conferences. I think there are a few possibilities:

1. Your work was considered less interesting and therefore not worth a "prime-time" spot. It's impossible for anyone here to determine this and, honestly, its not worth thinking about.
2. The conference organized posters/presentations based on some other factor like order of submission, name of author, topic, etc... Anything could have landed your presentation at the end - someone has to be last and it might not have much to do with quality.
3. Related to 1, are you sure your presentation was really best suited to a particular conference? Its always possible that your work is actually quite good but not 100% on topic (or of broad interest).
4. Bad luck. Unless you have a trend spanning dozens of conferences, maybe there is nothing here. We tend to focus on extreme outcomes and you're more likely to notice when you are at the end (especially since you think this is a trend) than when you are stuck somewhere in the middle.

I don't actually think there is anything for you to do. It's not even clear that there is something wrong in the first place. You probably can't go wrong with @Ethan Bolker's suggestions. But really, just focus on producing quality work and identifying conferences which are best suited to sharing that work.

Answer 5

Mostly, my experience agrees with the existing answers by BioBrains and Thomas Schwarz — schedules are decided by a variety of concerns, with “quality” far down on the list if it’s considered at all.

The one common exception, in my experience, is that committees often aim to put strong talks in certain key time-slots — speakers we expect to give a compelling talk and/or attract a large audience (which mostly coincide). These slots typically include each day’s opening talk, especially the first day, but also often each closing talk as well, especially the last day’s, to make sure the conference ends on a strong note, and also to motivate participants to stick around to the end. An unpopular schedule on the last afternoon is a recipe for audience attrition.

So a few of the strongest (maybe c.10% of all talks) often have their quality taken into account in their scheduling; but for the placement of the rest, quality is essentially irrelevant to the schedule. In particular, I’ve never known a committee speak in terms of trying to “bury” bad talks, or consistently put weaker talks into later sessions; so I wouldn’t draw any bad conclusions from the scheduling you describe.