Ontology of Academic Conferences: Analysis of Abstract, Presentation, and Publication

Abstract

Purpose: Academic conferences are stratified knowledge events whose ontological structure spanning abstract submission, oral presentation, and post-conference publication remains under-theorised in the scholarly literature. This article proposes the Conference Engagement Framework (CEF), grounded in the three-domain ontology of Critical Realism (CR) and validated through a mixed evidence base.

Methodology: A PRISMA 2020-guided systematic literature review (n = 38 studies) was triangulated with semi-structured expert interviews (N = 17: Management = 6, Engineering = 5, Medical Science = 6) and direct observation of five academic conferences (3 national, 2 international).

Results & Analysis: CR's three ontological domains map precisely onto the three conference phases: the Empirical Domain (observable outputs) governs abstract selection; the Actual Domain (events and mechanisms) governs presentational influence; and the Real Domain (generative structures) governs publication and citation legacy.

Originality / Value: CEF offers a heuristic for maximising conference impact and scholarly legacy.

Type of Paper: Empirical Research Paper.