Ten Simple Rules for organizing a non–real-time web conference

Arnal, Ana; Epifanio, Irene; Gregori, Pablo; Martínez, Vicente

doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007667

Cited by 18 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Measures taken to combat the pandemic such as travel restrictions, closed borders and gathering bans led to cancellations of many conferences, meetings and workshops and forced the scientific community to consider alternative (virtual) formats based on video conferencing software (Gichora et al 2010 ; Abbott 2020 ; Achakulvisut et al 2020 ; Arnal et al 2020 ; Viglione 2020 ). The sharp rise in the stock exchange valuation of the main software provider for video conferencing during the pandemic reflects the strong surge in demand for its product, possibly implying that its diffusion is reaching a more general phase (Rogers 2003 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When international academic conferences go virtual

Falk

Hagsten

2020

Scientometrics

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This study investigates the extent to which international academic conferences changes format to virtual when faced by sudden Covid-19 related immobility. Data on 587 conferences in the fields of business, economics, information technology, management and other social sciences that were planned to be held between March and August 2020 are retrieved from authorised conference listings. Approximately 28% of the conferences changed to virtual format during the period of time studied. Probit estimations reveal that the probability of changing format to virtual increases with the country of location (United States), planning horizon and the available quality of broadband infrastructure in the scheduled conference country. However, the role of planning horizon differs across fields and location of the conference. The probability of virtual conferences is highest in the United States and for academic conferences in the field of information technology.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When international academic conferences go virtual

Falk

Hagsten

2020

Scientometrics

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“…This is will be a process of experimentation, and the research and rules summarized here can function as a checklist for planners. The evidence strongly suggests that collecting data at online conferences and formalizing feedback from participants will be a major path forward for much better conferences in future (Arnal et al., 2020)—in spite of what we test this year and next out of necessity. The research and publishing world is evolving in ecology and evolution (perhaps not quickly enough), and we now have the impetus to rapidly align another relatively major component of the scientific pursuit, conferences, or to pioneer new directions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…We are working to surface more of the scientific process in ecology and evolution in publishing (Byrnes et al, 2014) through open science, and the same principles can be applied to our conferencing activities. Open science is the movement to make more of the scientific process open and accessible to the public (Allen & Mehler, 2019).…”

Section: Innovati On S and Appli C Ati On S S Pecifi C To Ecology Amentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The purpose of this exercise was to cursorily examine how to use the rules for online conferences within the scaffolding of learning and to increase ease of use as a checklist. These editorials encompassed rules for gender balance at conferences (Martin, 2014), how to organize a virtual conference anywhere (Gichora et al., 2010), nonreal‐time conferencing (Arnal et al., 2020), and how to deliver bioinformatics training across the globe (Carvalho‐Silva et al., 2018). Rules included how to make training materials findable and accessible online (Garcia et al., 2020), planning a webinar series, (Fadlelmola et al., 2019), an unconference (Budd et al., 2015), and live tweeting conferences (Ekins & Perlstein, 2014).…”

Section: Innovations and Applications Specific To Ecology And Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The meeting theme of the British Ecological Society, "Ecology Across Borders" and many other contemporary conferences are also ideally suited to design thinking and experimentation (Burdick & Willis, 2011). I propose that we test as many new ways to meet online this year (and next) as possible so as to better align our values and practices including social equity (Parrott, 2017) and open science (Allen & Mehler, 2019;Lowndes et al, 2017) with how we meet. Better learning in particular can be enabled by planning specifically for online and distributed conferences.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Online conferences for better learning

Lortie

2020

Ecology and Evolution

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A crisis is never welcomed, and we must now rally to innovate how we do science. We need to work harder to make conferences better and not only address the immediate challenges but tackle pre-existing limitations associated with conferences and meetings. Conferences are a profoundly useful mechanism to enable scientific progress as a community. These conventions provide the opportunity to network, collaborate, communicate, connect early-career researchers with new (and established) collaborators, and most importantly co-learn and build community. Ecologists and evolutionary biologists are scientists, citizens, educators, and a collective that can affect social good. Hence, conferences allow us to convene and share and learn in different and extended ways (Cooke et al., 2017). These meetings are typically about more than scientific content and facilitate the identification of research gaps and opportunities (Kochetkov et al., 2020; Oester et al., 2017). In some respects, coming together also helps us decide how we feel about the global grand challenges that we face environmentally and as a species (Acocella, 2015). We build collective strength and cohesion. Conferences in ecology and evolution are also incredibly frequent. A brief search on sites that compile conference listings for ecology and evolution including the Nature Ecology and Evolution website, relevant society sites, and The World Academy of Science, Engineering, and Technology (filtered using the key term "ecology") suggest that there were approximately 400 meetings scheduled for the calendar year of 2020 (Lortie, 2020c). However, as citizens, we have a moral responsibility to flatten the curve of a pandemic through reduced in-person interactions, smaller conventions only for critical needs, and much less travel to mitigate spread and reduce risks for everyone (Khoo & Lantos, 2020; Verma et al., 2020). More broadly, we can reconsider the carbon costs and other impacts including accessibility and the equity of costs to convene exclusively through faceto-face meetings (Julsrud et al., 2014; Neugebauer et al., 2020). In doing so, we have an opportunity to promote equity, diversity, and inclusivity through different planning, by reducing some of the financial costs, and by sharing our insights to wider, more varied com

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Going Virtual: What we Learned from the Ecological Forecasting Initiative Research Coordination Network Virtual Workshop

Peters

Thomas

2021

Bulletin Ecologic Soc America

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The NSF-funded Ecological Forecasting Initiative (EFI) Research Coordination Network (RCN) hosted a virtual conference, "Ecological Forecasting Initiative 2020: Coordinating the NEON-enabled forecasting challenge" on 12-13 May 2020. The objectives of the workshop were to (1) give an introduction of the EFI-RCN, (2) provide an overview of the "supply side" of NEON data products that are available for use in ecological forecasting, (3) discuss the "demand side" of ecological forecasting and how organizations can use ecological forecasts, and (4) discuss topics and the need for an ecological forecast challenge (similar to a data science competition), which would bring the community together collaboratively and create forecasts using NEON data products. We finished the meeting by collectively brainstorming cyberinfrastructure, education, and software needs in order to empower individuals and groups to participate in an ecological forecasting challenge using NEON data.The EFI-RCN virtual conference replaced a three-day in-person workshop that was scheduled at the same time but was canceled due to COVID-19. Shifting to a virtual format allowed us to increase our participation and diversity. We originally had a space limitation of 65 in-person participants, but 205 people were able to register and access the workshop materials for our virtual meeting. A hundred and fifty individuals consistently joined on day one and 110 individuals consistently participated on day two. We welcomed participants from around the globe, with almost 10% of participants calling in from outside the United States. Moreover, instead of being limited to 15 graduate student participants, we ended up with over 50 graduate and undergraduate students in the meeting.While the EFI community has, from its inception, been video calling (i.e., Zoom) for small working groups, the conference was a considerably larger gathering than any of us had previously organized. Here, we reflect on the key elements that allowed our workshop logistics and technology to flow smoothly in order to help others who are developing conferences and workshops in a virtual format. Below, we include general suggestions for the structure and format that we found worked well for our meeting. We also provide suggestions for specific tools we ourselves used to bring our community together and facilitate a means of engagement; however, we acknowledge that there are alternative resources or that some of these resources may not be available to everyone. Finally, we note that Zoom and other software are continuously evolving; we used Zoom version 5.0.1 for our conference.

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Ten Simple Rules for organizing a non–real-time web conference

Cited by 18 publications

References 16 publications

When international academic conferences go virtual

When international academic conferences go virtual

Online conferences for better learning

Going Virtual: What we Learned from the Ecological Forecasting Initiative Research Coordination Network Virtual Workshop

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