When international academic conferences go virtual
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When international academic conferences go virtual Martin Thomas Falk1 · Eva Hagsten2 Received: 8 July 2020 / Accepted: 8 October 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract 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. Keywords Online conference · Virtual conferences · Video conferences · Academic conferences · High-speed broadband · Probit estimations JEL Classification I20 · I23 · O33
Introduction Unexpected extraordinary events such as financial crises, ash clouds or more recently, the global spread of the Covid-19 virus dramatically change the opportunities for academics from around the world to gather and meet in-person at conferences. Conferences are not only important for networking in general (Oester et al. 2017; Hansen and Budtz Pedersen 2018), but also for keeping current with trends in the field (Harrison 2010), developing Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1119 2-020-03754-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Martin Thomas Falk [email protected] Eva Hagsten [email protected] 1
Department of Business and IT, School of Business, University of South-Eastern Norway (USN), Gullbringvegen 36, 3800 Bø, Norway
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School of Social Sciences, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Scientometrics
potential research collaborations (Wang et al. 2017; Chai and Freeman 2019), disseminating research (Black et al. 2020), identifying job opportunities, career development (Oester et al. 2017; Black et al. 2020; Kim et al. 2020), renewing friendships (Achakulvisut et al. 2020), knowledge transfer (Goel and Grimpe 2013; Goel et al. 2014) and bringing together practitioners and academics (Dorsch et al. 2014). According to Hansen and Budtz Pedersen (2018), the preparation and the presentation of a paper and the subsequent feedback from the audience increase the quality of the research and thus the chances of publication in a high-ranking journal. Measures taken to combat the pandemic such as travel restrictions, closed borders and gathering bans led to cancellations of many conferences, meetings an
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