In academia and librarianship, conference proceedings are a collection of academic papers published in the context of an academic conference or workshop. Conference proceedings typically contain the contributions made by researchers at the conference. They are the written record of the work that is presented to fellow researchers. In many fields, they are published as supplements to academic journals; in some, they are considered the main dissemination route; in others they may be considered grey literature. They are usually distributed in printed or electronic volumes, either before the conference opens or after it has closed.
A less common, broader meaning of proceedings are the acts and happenings of an academic field, a learned society. For example, the title of the Acta Crystallographica journals is Neo-Latin for "Proceedings in Crystallography"; the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America is the main journal of that academy. Scientific journals whose ISO 4 title abbreviations start with Proc, Acta, or Trans are journals of the proceedings (transactions) of a field or of an organization concerned with it, in that secondary meaning of the word.
