<p>The issue with scientific publications is complex and varies from one field to another.</p>
<p>One of the stranger customs in some fields is that you can make an oral presentation about work that you have not yet published, but if someone describes your talk in the news media or on the Internet, this could be regarded as “prior publication” and make it impossible for you to publish your work in a scientific journal.</p>
<p>I had a job where I attended scientific meetings and wrote summary reports of those meetings, which were published on the Internet by the entities that sponsored the meetings. Sometimes, scientists would choose to present unpublished work at those meetings – which was acceptable (and was done only at meetings where no representatives of the news media were present). It was crucial to omit the unpublished work from the sponsoring organization’s summary report to avoid causing publication problems for the authors.</p>