Although the conference report literature is not considered to be validly published data, it has become a very substantial portion of the total literature in many areas of science in recent years. Conference reports are generally defined as not validly published data for several reasons, among others being the most important is the lack of any real quality control. Therefore, many reputable publishers define proceedigs volumes as non-primary.
Fortunately, more and more conference proceedings are rigorously edited (e. g. 2002WSEAS International Confernece on Nanoelectronics and Nanotechnologies) and their prestige is equal to primary jurnals. Some conference proceedings appear as issues of journals.
Thus, the content and quality of the conference report will mostly depend on whether the proceeedings volume will be defined as primary or non-primary one.
Therefore, if previosly unpublished data presented at the conference have not been validly published that may preclude later republication in a primary journal. If the proceedings volume is judged to be primary, editor will precisely indicate to prepare your manuscript in journal style. Then, you should give full experimantal detail, present both data and discussion of the data as it would be in a prestigious journal. If the proceeding volume is non-primary publication, the style of writing may be quite different. Conference report should be designed to give the news and the speculations, without experimental details and the usual literature review.
The conference report can be relatively short. It is often limited to one or two printed pages, or 1000 to 2000 words. Authors are usually provided with a simple formulation such as "up to six manuscript pages, double spaced, two columns, not more than four illustrations(any combinations of tables, graphs or photographs)".
The conference report shoud serve the purpose of a true preliminary report; it should present and encourage speculation, alternative theories, and suggestions for future research. Therefore, the typical conference report needs not to follow the usual IMRAD formula. Instead, abbreviated approach may be used: the problem is stated; the methods/techiques used are stated but not descibed in detail; the results are presented briefly, with a few (1-3) tables or figures; the meaning of the results specualted about should be given in considerable length; the literature review mostly includes the results from the author's laboratory or of the colleagues working on related problems.
It should be always kept in mind that the editor of the proceedings, usually the conference organizer, is the sole arbiter of questions relating to manuscript preparation. If the editor has distributed Instructions to Authors you should follow them whatever the rules are. Following the rules, the resultant volume is likely to be of conistent value and be a credit to all concerned.
REFERENCES
1. Day AR. How to write and published a scientific paper. Phoenix-New York: Oryx Press; 1998. p. 168-71.
2. Savić J. Kako napisati, objaviti i vrednovti naučno delo u biomedicini. Beograd: Kultura; 1996. p. 8-56.
3. Philips JS. Principles of the scientific paper. In: EAU Publication Committee - Chairman: Prof. C. Schulman. editor. How to: write and publish scientific papers. Proceedings of the the educational symposium. "Effective Communications for Urologists"; 1999. p. 7-10.