Rethinking Academic Conferences in the Age of Pandemic

ABSTRACT

The year 2020 witnessed the havoc wreaked by the coronavirus disease COVID-19 due to its onset in late 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic is the cruelest public health crisis humankind has ever seen. The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly affected every walk of life, and academic research has been no exception. Academic conferences are an indispensable component of research. Note that the pandemic together with its variants ravaged the globe in 2020, while their recurrences yet have a deep shadow across 2021 and 2022 with uncertainties for the near future. Under the sway of the pandemic, many conferences are conducted in virtual mode to mitigate the propagation of the virus. It is no surprise that academic conferences charge the attendees for registration fees with the amount varying by countries and disciplines. Here, we collect the registration fee information for conferences held in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Note that virtual conferences barely cater to attendees except by providing online platforms. However, we discover that most of the virtual conferences held in 2020 and 2021 still charged high registration fees compared to those in 2019, while the remaining conferences only applied small discounts. In light of the current situation of the pandemic as well as uncertainties in the future, virtual conferences could be a common form of academic activity. Considering the sluggish global economy at well as other potential issues, here, we advocate that going virtual should always be an option for academic conferences in the future. We also suggest that virtual conferences should charge less and the expenditure of the fees should be open to the public.