| name | conference-research |
| description | Find papers from specific ECE/CS venues. Activate when you need to discover papers accepted at specific conferences/journals, analyze venue acceptance patterns, or look up CFP requirements. |
| always | false |
Conference Research Protocol
When researching papers from specific academic venues, academic_search with venue names WILL FAIL — conference names don't appear in arXiv paper titles. Use source-specific strategies below.
Source Priority (try in order)
1. ECE/CS Power Systems Venues: IEEE PES / IREP / PSCC / PowerTech
openalex_search: {topic} year_from=2020 sort_by=citations
academic_search: {topic} source=arxiv # for preprints only
web_search: site:ieeexplore.ieee.org {topic} {conference} {year}
2. Control Theory Venues: CDC / ACC / IFAC
openalex_search: {topic} sort_by=citations
web_search: site:ieeexplore.ieee.org {topic} CDC {year}
3. ML/AI Venues: NeurIPS / ICLR / ICML
OpenReview is authoritative for all three:
web_search: site:openreview.net {topic keywords} NeurIPS 2024
web_search: site:openreview.net {topic keywords} ICLR 2025
web_search: site:openreview.net {topic keywords} ICML 2024
Do NOT quote the topic phrase; use bare keywords.
4. NLP Venues: ACL / EMNLP / NAACL
ACL Anthology is authoritative:
web_search: site:aclanthology.org "{topic}" {year}
Venue codes: acl-long, acl-short, emnlp-main, naacl-main
5. Systems Venues: OSDI / SOSP / EuroSys / MLSys
web_search: site:dblp.org {venue-abbrev} {year} {topic keywords}
6. Cross-Venue Search
openalex_search: {topic} sort_by=citations # 250M+ works, all domains
semantic_scholar: {topic} # citation graphs
Critical Anti-Patterns (NEVER do these)
- arXiv_search with venue names —
ti:"CDC" or ti:"NeurIPS" will return garbage. Conference names are not in arXiv paper titles.
- Using arXiv alone for venue-specific papers — arXiv has preprints, not accepted papers.
- Conflating Findings/Workshop with Main Conference —
acl-findings is not acl-long.
- Asserting venue preferences without evidence — require at least 3 papers as evidence before stating a pattern.
Analysis Workflow (after collecting papers)
- Note each paper's track (Main / Workshop / Findings) — do not conflate them
- Group papers by methodological approach, not just topic keyword
- Extract style signals from abstracts (theoretical vs empirical, simulation vs hardware)
- Require minimum 3 papers as evidence before stating a venue preference pattern
- Cross-validate CFP scope text against the collected paper sample
Finding CFP and Acceptance Criteria
web_search: "{Conference} {year} call for papers"
web_search: "{Conference} {year} submission guidelines review criteria"
web_search: "{Conference} {year} acceptance rate topics scope"
