The new norm: Computer Science conferences respond to COVID-19
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The new norm: Computer Science conferences respond to COVID‑19 Omar Mubin1 · Fady Alnajjar2 · Abdullah Shamail3 · Suleman Shahid3 · Simeon Simoff1 Received: 15 September 2020 © Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary 2020
Abstract The disruption from COVID-19 has been felt deeply across all walks of life. Similarly, academic conferences as one key pillar of dissemination and interaction around research and development have taken a hit. We analyse an interesting focal point as to how conferences in the area of Computer Science have reacted to this disruption with respect to their mode of offering and registration prices, and whether their response is contingent upon specific factors such as where the conference was to be hosted, its ranking, its publisher or its original scheduled date. To achieve this, we collected metadata associated with 170 conferences in the area of Computer Science and as a means of comparison; 25 Psychology conferences. We show that conferences in the area of Computer Science have demonstrated agility and resilience by progressing to an online mode due to COVID-19 (approximately 76% of Computer Science conferences moved to an online mode), many with no changes in their schedule, particularly those in North America and those with a higher ranking. Whilst registration fees have lowered by an average of 42% due to the onset of COVID-19, conferences still have to facilitate attendance on a large scale due to the logistics and costs involved. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of our findings and speculate what they mean for conferences, including those in Computer Science, in the post-COVID-19 world. Keywords Research conferences · Virtual conferences · Computer Science · COVID-19 · Disruption
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1119 2-020-03788-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Fady Alnajjar [email protected] Omar Mubin [email protected] 1
Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia
2
College of IT, UAE University, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates
3
Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan
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Scientometrics
Introduction Academic conferences are one of the primary forms of dissemination of research output and scientific work. Particularly in the discipline of Computer Science, many conferences are highly prestigious with the reputation of some on par with peer reviewed journals (Vardi 2009; Vrettas and Sanderson 2015); some notable conferences having acceptance rates as low as 20% (Fathalla et al. 2017). Typically, proceedings of computer science conferences archive main track submissions as full papers normally in the range of 6 to 10 double column pages which are reviewed in their entirety and not as abstracts (Caires 2015), unlike other fields such as Business or Design. Further, bibliometric studies have shown that Computer Science researchers publish much more in conferences as compared to journals (Franceschet 201
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