Based on interviews with 172 academic scientists from 70 research universities in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and elsewhere, this report presents highly detailed information about how they felt about the online and in-person scientific conference experience during the pandemic, and how they feel conferences should be held in the near future, and after the pandemic. The study helps its readers answer questions such as: how many conferences have academic scientists attended during the pandemic and how many do they plan to attend currently and in the near future? How safe do they feel attending conferences in person? What percentage have they attended in person vs virtually? What have they liked most and least about the online conference experience? What would they like to see carried over to the post pandemic period? How might online and other technologies be best exploited by conference organizers in the near future?
Just a few of the 71-page report’s many findings are that:
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Scholars in STEM subjects from top-40 ranked universities internationally have attended either online or in person a mean of 3.79 scientific conferences since the onset of the pandemic.
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Scholars from the UK/Ireland were the most likely to feel unsafe attending a conference in person.
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9.1% of scholars aged under 35 expect to attend fewer conferences in person than they had attended prior to the inception of the pandemic.
Data in the report is broken out by many variables for better benchmarking including global university ranking, public/private status, tuition level, country and enrollment level of the institutions associated with the survey participants, as well as the age, gender, tenure status and academic field of the participants. Data is presented separately for scholars from the USA, the UK/Ireland, Canada and Australia, for example.