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I am a PhD student in economics and I try to finish and send a paper to an international conference but the version that I will send will be a very preliminary version.

I see sometimes in my field that there are papers in which people write under title a little note that the current version is a "Preliminary Version". I know that most papers sent to conferences are always not complete but I wonder if it is good to write "Preliminary Version" below the title of the paper.

I ask this question myself because it is sending directly a signal to reviewers and I can not expect how they will react to this note.

Two possibilities : 1) If they like the main idea of the paper, they would be more tolerant for accepting it.

2) They could be more harsh as the author has already wrote on the paper that it is a preliminary version, with thinking that author has not completed it yet.

PS. The papers sent to this conference are blind copies.

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    I know that most papers sent to conferences are always not complete but I wonder if it is good to write "Preliminary Version" below the title of the paper. -- In my field, the well-known conferences will reject the incomplete manuscripts.
    – user41207
    Jan 26, 2016 at 18:37
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    A conference which is considered as a publication venue will expect complete and correct manuscripts and will review them as such. A purely presentational conference or a small workshop may accept such submissions.
    – Captain Emacs
    Jan 26, 2016 at 19:51

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In my field (one of the social sciences), where conference papers are usually regarded as work in progress that at a later stage will be send to a journal (as opposed to computer science, where 'publication in a conference' often is the goal), it is not uncommon that people include a statement like "Work in progress, please request most recent version from the authors before citing". I've done that several times, in fact.

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While things may vary between fields, I would expect that a paper with 'preliminary version' is an unpublished (at least not published at an official venue) paper, that the author already wants to make available.

It is generally acceptable to publish 'preliminary results'. E.g., in a large cohort study that runs for several years, it is not unheard of to publish intermediate results.

But 'preliminary version' gives the impression that the paper itself is not finished. Such manuscripts will not be published by any serious journal or conference. Therefore, including this in your title will certainly reduce the chances of being accepted.

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    I think the distinction between "preliminary results" (acceptable) and "preliminary paper" (mostly not acceptable) is key here.
    – silvado
    Jan 27, 2016 at 12:27

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