Finding conferences that fit your work

Start with words rather than categories. The search box reads the whole listing — the name, the description, the field it is filed under — so a phrase from your own abstract usually works better than the label somebody else chose for the subject. "Coral reef restoration" finds more useful things here than picking Marine Biology and reading down the list.

Relevance to what you typed decides the order of the results, and it counts for more than every other signal put together. A conference that is popular, complete and well established does not overtake one that actually answers your query. If a result looks unrelated to what you asked, that is a fault worth telling us about.

Once you have a set worth narrowing, the filters on the left cut it down. Fields, countries and regions do what you would expect. The one people ask about is the control at the top offering open calls for papers, open registration, or all — that is a fact about the listing rather than a question about you. Open calls shows conferences whose submission date has not passed; open registration shows conferences you can still register for. It is not saved, it resets to all, and nothing about it is recorded against your account.

Nothing here asks whether you present or attend. That changes per conference and per year, so we do not ask it once and then get it wrong for everything after.

When a search is one you will run again, save it. A saved search can email you when something new matches, which is the difference between finding a conference and finding it in time to submit.