Separate the project from the presentation

A project may involve research permissions, an institutional ethics process, participant consent and rules for handling data. A conference has its own submission and presentation process. Maintain separate records for these decisions even when they concern the same study.

NACOSTI provides a research-licence application guide and a research-ethics resource centre. These official resources are the place to check the relevant process; this article does not decide whether your particular project needs a licence or which review route applies. [1] [2]

Ask your institution’s research office to clarify the requirements for your project before treating a presentation invitation as permission to disclose results. The event organiser cannot substitute for the authority responsible for the research approval.

Build a compact evidence packet

Use a project identifier to connect the abstract, approved protocol where applicable, contributor list and disclosure permissions. Store confidential approval documents in the institution’s permitted location, not on a public event profile.

For the conference itself, record the official edition page, the call for papers and the expected output. Save the date you checked them. If the event is promoted through a directory, preserve that discovery source but find the organiser’s own submission page before proceeding.

Do not include identifiable participant data in an abstract or an AI prompt merely to make it more persuasive. Review the project’s consent and disclosure conditions with the responsible team. UNESCO’s guidance highlights privacy and human oversight in the use of generative AI for education and research. [3]

Verify claims at the right source

For a university affiliation, check the university’s own record. For a proceedings claim, identify the proposed publication route. For a submission date, read the edition’s current call. Each question needs its own evidence; one prominent logo cannot answer all three.

Our recommended review sheet contains “confirmed”, “unresolved” and “not applicable” fields. Use the unresolved field actively. It is more useful than assigning a confident label when the official source is missing.

A new or small event should not be classified as fraudulent because it has limited online history. Equally, a large catalogue footprint should not be treated as a quality certificate. Describe what you checked and what still needs confirmation.

Plan the outcome with your supervisor

Agree whether the submission is an early abstract, a poster, a full paper or an invited talk. Confirm who can approve the public version and who handles correspondence. Check overlap with other submissions before selecting a publication route.

A practical handoff is a one-page summary: project, proposed contribution, official source, permissions checked, estimated costs and next decision. Use your institution’s process for budget or travel approval. This template is an organisational suggestion, not a national compliance checklist.

ScholarVault can help keep candidate information and submission records together. Automated assessment should be read with its evidence coverage and cannot grant a research licence or ethics clearance. [4]

Retain an accurate account of the activity

After presentation, record the actual date, contribution and issued evidence. If the output later becomes a paper, add the publication identifier as a separate record and link it to the presentation rather than silently converting one into the other.

This preserves the distinction between research permissions, presentation evidence and publication status. It also helps a future supervisor or research administrator reconstruct the decision without relying on a folder of unrelated screenshots.

Your next step: ask the research office which project approvals need to be recorded, then create a separate conference evidence sheet. Resolve the two sets of questions before sharing or paying.

Sources & reading notes

Sources reviewed for this draft on 9 October 2026. Institutional examples illustrate a source trail; they do not imply a ScholarVault partnership or endorsement. Workflow recommendations are ScholarVault’s editorial interpretation.

  1. NACOSTI — research-licence application guidelines
  2. NACOSTI — ethics-review resource centre
  3. UNESCO — guidance for generative AI in education and research
  4. ScholarVault — SCVS methodology and assessment limits

Have a correction or a newer institutional source? Send it to the editorial team.

Back to the opening ↑