Cite a conference paper in Chicago (author-date)
Conference papers need careful handling because a published proceedings paper is not the same thing as an unpublished presentation or slide deck. In Chicago (author-date) (17th ed.), cite the paper title, the proceedings title, and the conference details when available. The publisher, page range, DOI, and location tell readers whether the work was archived, presented live, or formally published.
Chicago (author-date) rules for a conference paper
- Author and year identify the paper, not the conference organiser.
- Paper title appears before the proceedings title.
- Use In plus proceedings editor and proceedings title when the volume names editors.
- Include conference name, location, and dates when supplied by the proceedings.
- Add page range, publisher, DOI, or URL as the final locator.
- Notes may include fuller conference location and date details.
Worked example
Chicago (author-date) · conference paperA real conference paper formatted using the Chicago (author-date) rules above.
Vaswani, Ashish, and Noam Shazeer, Niki Parmar. 2017. "Attention is all you need." Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 30. accessed January 15, 2025. https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/2017/hash/3f5ee243547dee91fbd053c1c4a845aa-Abstract.html.
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