Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Apr 20:9:e57892.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.57892.

Improving on legacy conferences by moving online

Titipat Achakulvisut  1 , Tulakan Ruangrong  2 , Isil Bilgin  3 , Sofie Van Den Bossche  4 , Brad Wyble #  5 , Dan Fm Goodman #  6 , Konrad P Kording #  7
Affiliations

Improving on legacy conferences by moving online

Titipat Achakulvisut et al. Elife. .

Abstract

Scientific conferences and meetings have an important role in research, but they also suffer from a number of disadvantages: in particular, they can have a massive carbon footprint, they are time-consuming, and the high costs involved in attending can exclude many potential participants. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the cancellation of many conferences, forcing the scientific community to explore online alternatives. Here, we report on our experiences of organizing an online neuroscience conference, neuromatch, that attracted some 3000 participants and featured two days of talks, debates, panel discussions, and one-on-one meetings facilitated by a matching algorithm. By offering most of the benefits of traditional conferences, several clear advantages, and with fewer of the downsides, we feel that online conferences have the potential to replace many legacy conferences.

Keywords: climate change; collaboration; neuroscience; research culture; scientific community; scientific meetings and conferences.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

TA, TR, IB, SV, BW, DG, KK No competing interests declared

References

    1. Abbott A. Low-carbon, virtual science conference tries to recreate social buzz. Nature. 2020;577:13. doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-03899-1. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Achakulvisut T, Acuna DE, Kording K. Paper-reviewer matcher. GitHub. 2018 https://github.com/titipata/paper-reviewer-matcher
    1. eLife eLife and COVID-19: Keeping communications open with online research talks. [April 15, 2020];2020 https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/1a9d9c08/elife-and-covid-19-keepi...
    1. Gichora NN, Fatumo SA, Ngara MV, Chelbat N, Ramdayal K, Opap KB, Siwo GH, Adebiyi MO, El Gonnouni A, Zofou D, Maurady AAM, Adebiyi EF, de Villiers EP, Masiga DK, Bizzaro JW, Suravajhala P, Ommeh SC, Hide W. Ten simple rules for organizing a virtual conference—anywhere. PLOS Computational Biology. 2010;6:e1000650. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000650. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Hu JC. This neuroscientist's poster showed how US travel bans stifle ground-breaking research. [April 15, 2020];Quartz. 2018 https://qz.com/1454743/this-neuroscientists-poster-showed-how-us-travel-...