Cite a conference paper in MLA 9
Conference papers need careful handling because a published proceedings paper is not the same thing as an unpublished presentation or slide deck. In MLA 9 (2021), 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.
MLA 9 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.
- Container 1 is the proceedings; container 2 can be the conference.
Worked example
MLA 9 · conference paperA real conference paper formatted using the MLA 9 rules above.
Vaswani, Ashish, et al "Attention is all you need." *Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 30*, 2017, proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/2017/hash/3f5ee243547dee91fbd053c1c4a845aa-Abstract.html. Accessed 15 Jan. 2025.
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