Should I publish proceedings papers or journal articles?

I often get asked whether one should aim for proceedings papers or journal articles. Interesting question. If you ask people in the humanities or psychology, they would argue against proceedings papers. However, for informatics researchers, it is the default (journal articles are rare).

I encourage publishing in both. If you have a short story that is worth telling quickly, definitely go for a proceedings paper. It counts as a real publication, it will be cited, and it will seem perfectly normal to anyone close to computer science. The time from writing to publication will also be much shorter.

It won’t “count” as much as a journal article from a psychology perspective, but in my experience, having a mix of journal articles and proceedings papers will be beneficial in the long run.

In sum, I would say it is not a yes or no, it is a thank you, both.