I've never attended ASA before, and I have a paper accepted at a Refereed Roundtable (one-hour). Can someone tell me what the format of this roundtable is, whether there is a discussant, and whether it's worth forking out $1,000 to attend this conference?
ASA Roundtables
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Round tables are considered less 'prestigious'. In the right hands they can work - if all the presenters fit well together and read each other's papers beforehand and actually show up you can have a far more productive conversation than a thinly attended panel. I have been to a couple of very good round tables, we even had 3-4 non presenters show up so almost 8-9 people around the table.
Sometimes there is a discussant, sometimes that person is just managing the email chain.If you have research money to attend then go... Otherwise forget it.
There are other this to the conference like the other talks and networking and meeting your friends (this applies especially post PhD when you no longer see your cohort around anymore) -
When so many people say 'if you have to pay out of pocket, don't go,' you know it's worthless and probably shouldn't even exist. There is something inherently wrong with a situation where most people involved wouldn't be if they had to personally foot the bill.
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I also wouldn't do sociology if I had to foot the bill. Your logic makes no sense.
When so many people say 'if you have to pay out of pocket, don't go,' you know it's worthless and probably shouldn't even exist. There is something inherently wrong with a situation where most people involved wouldn't be if they had to personally foot the bill.
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Sigh. I've been involuntarily added to a roundtable, despite not checking the "please send my paper to a roundtable" box. They must be desperate for money this year...
The same thing happened to me. I got rejected from my first choice, never got reviewed at my second, and got sent to a roundtable.
I'll probably be skipping ASA.
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I also wouldn't do sociology if I had to foot the bill. Your logic makes no sense.
When so many people say 'if you have to pay out of pocket, don't go,' you know it's worthless and probably shouldn't even exist. There is something inherently wrong with a situation where most people involved wouldn't be if they had to personally foot the bill.Not the same thing. You are the one performing the service when you do your job (I'm assuming you are a professional sociologist). The ASA is in the role of service provider in this situation, and the beneficiaries of that service are unwilling to personally pay for the product. The logic is perfectly sound - the actual users of the service don't think it's worth personally funding and that speaks volumes about its lack of value.
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I don't think my two pieces were even reviewed in my first choice panel before they got handed down to roundtable. Not going anyway. Paying ASA only to see the jobs.
Seriously. It didn't look like mine were either. I guess panel organizers just set things up ahead of time with people they know, then kick every paper down to the round tables. Stupid system.
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The purpose of roundtables is to present when you are required to do so to receive travel funding from your university. If you want feedback, you'd be better off giving the paper to someone to read. The feedback from roundtables, and sessions for that matter, won't be all that useful.
You typically won't get "reviews" from sessions you submit to, but that doesn't mean they didn't look at your paper. What type of reviews do you want? No, sorry, I didn't like your paper as much as the other papers that were submitted? Or are you expecting some sort of substantive feedback? No one has time for that. Every time I've submitted I've gotten no reviews (be that for accept or reject), or one sentence for rejects along the lines of "good paper, but another session would be a better fit."
If the only reason you're going to ASA is present at a roundtable, don't go. And maybe think about whether this is really the profession you want to be in.