Scientists want virtual meetings to stay after the COVID pandemic - Nature.com

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced scientists to share their research at virtual conferences in the past year.Credit: Laurence Dutton/Getty.

Although researchers are getting ‘Zoom fatigue’ just like everyone else, they’ve learnt to appreciate virtual science conferences during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a poll of more than 900 Nature readers.

After navigating a year of online research presentations, the majority of survey respondents — 74% — think that scientific meetings should continue to be virtual, or have a virtual component, after the pandemic ends.

Now, having met the challenge of switching to virtual, conference organizers will have to consider logistically and financially how to blend the best of both worlds by incorporating virtual elements when in-person meetings resume.

Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Canada, tells Nature that virtual platforms allowed her to attend meetings without compromising her teaching workload or responsibilities as the parent of small children.

For example, the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), which is jointly organized with two other small societies, has lowered its student registration fee from more than US$300 for an in-person event to as low as $10 for the upcoming 2021 virtual meeting.

Despite the benefits of virtual events, they do have drawbacks, researchers say, including screen-time fatigue and time-zone scheduling conflicts.

Conference organizers are trying to find workarounds, including formal mentorship programmes that pair early-career scientists with established ones, and virtual ‘lobbies’ on conference platforms where attendees can meet and greet between presentations.

Hawley Helmbrecht, a PhD student in chemical engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle, says early-career scientists and introverts might find it less intimidating to ask questions during virtual sessions and reach out to new people — including prominent scientists — than during in-person meetings.

Scientists with disabilities also caution that the benefits of virtual conferences are not black and white.

Evolutionary biologist Mitch Cruzan at Portland State University in Oregon has been helping to plan the 2021 virtual conference hosted by the SSE, which generally attracts around 1,800 attendees in person.

The novelty of virtual conferences has worn off in the past year, but they are likely to be here to stay, even as in-person events return, says Pamela Ballinger, senior director of meetings and exhibits at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).

But paying for in-person conference venues as well as a virtual platform is likely to be prohibitive for the society’s smaller, specialty conferences, she says.

Still, Larrahondo and others hope that meeting organizers will continue to prioritize the increased accessibility that comes with virtual platforms

Correction 02 March 2021: This story was updated to more accurately reflect Hawley Helmbrecht’s thoughts about virtual meetings