Optimizing conference paper solution to be eligible for Journal article

Question

I have presented recently in one of IEEE computer science conferences. My paper's main contributions was optimizing an algorithm to achieve 3.5X times speed up. Now, I am planning to submit another paper to one of Springer's journals with IF 0.7. However, the only new contribution here is I optimized the gain to be 4.5X in addition to theoretical comparison between the algorithm and other 3 algorithms to justify why I have chosen this algorithm to be improved. The paper has been re-written completely and I am aware of the plagiarism issue. However, I am still concerned, is that contribution sufficient to make my paper qualified?

Answer 1

Let the editors and/or reviewers decide whether the new contribution is sufficient. Mention that you extend previous work. It may be wise to be explicit about the novelties with regards to the previous work in the cover letter.

In case the original paper was published in conference proceedings (e.g. not just a talk), it is very important that you cite it. When you do that, there can be no claim that you are attempting to recycle existing material without anyone noticing (self-plagiarism).

Answer 2

It is possible that your paper be rejected because it is not novel. This depends on the discipline, the paper, the editors, and the reviewers. However, extending a conference paper into a journal paper is not uncommon.

If I write a conference paper that I would like to later publish in a peer-reviewed journal, I take a different approach on the conference paper. I always say in the conference abstract something like "this paper details preliminary results of our analysis", and I make sure to not to provide all the details or all the results in the paper. I can provide more details in the conference presentation to make a strong story, if they are available at the time of the conference.

In the cover letter when submitting the peer-reviewed paper, I say something like "preliminary results of this study were presented at _____". And ALWAYS cite the conference paper. You could also state how the submitted paper is different/improved/expanded/corrected from the conference paper in both the journal article and the cover letter at submission.

Good luck!