Evaluating features of scientific conferences: A call for improvements

Sarvenaz Sarabipour; Benjamin Schwessinger; Fiona N. Mumoki; Aneth D. Mwakilili; Aziz Khan; Humberto J. Debat; Pablo J. Sáez; Samantha Seah; Tomislav Mestrovic

Equity in planning scientific meetings creates fair opportunities for all and inclusivity creates a welcoming environment for all participants. The current organization of many conferences leads to practices that exclude researchers on a wide range of factors including, but not limited to, gender, ethnic, socioeconomic, health and geographical backgrounds, and career stage (8) . Women and researchers from racial and ethnic groups, who are under-represented in various fields, are the least likely to be offered opportunities to speak at meetings in their discipline (14, 15) . In-person conferences also harm the planet (Figures 1-2 , Tables S2-S11) (8) . (2018) (2019) (2020) in various scientific fields including Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Genomics, Chemistry, Ecology, Evolution, Cell Biology and Immunology (8) (Tables S2-S11 ). These societies combined have ~1,658,602 researchers as registered members attracting a combined ~859,114 attendees to these meetings. 1% of these meetings were held multiple times a year, 74% were held annually, 20% were held biennially and only 1% and 4% were held triennially and quadrennially respectively. Registration fees varied from US$100s to up to over $2,000. Only 6% of conferences included any form of green policy. Number of attendees reached up to over 30,000 for a single event. A total of ~859,114 attendees of these conferences collectively spent over US$1.288 billion and generated over 2 million tons of CO2 in the form of air travel and other activities to attend these meetings (Table S6, The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.02.022079 doi: bioRxiv preprint Figure 2 . The majority of academic conferences are not modern, equitable or inclusive. Summary of analysis on 270 recently held conferences (2018-2020) in various scientific fields (8) (Tables S2-S10 ). 19% of all conferences offered some form of childcare (free or at a cost) on-site (Table S9 ). 92% of conferences did not provide a gender equity statement on members of committees and speakers and did not disclose these gender statistics on their website. 40% of conferences with information (such as . CC-BY 4.0 International license author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.02.022079 doi: bioRxiv preprint first and last name of speakers and affiliations) available online had keynote speaker gender balance, 38% of conferences with information on plenary speakers and 19% of conferences with information on invited/featured speakers achieved a 50% or higher participation of women speakers. 37% of conferences that reported information on their website achieved organizing committee gender parity and 27% achieved scientific committee gender balance. 46% of conferences reporting conference chair names and 36% of conferences reporting session chair names achieved gender equity. Only 41% and 22% of conferences we examined included a code of conduct and code of research ethics or research integrity on their website respectively. Only 35% included some form of a career development workshop for ECRs and 38% included promotion events such as (either) special symposiums or podium talks or poster or oral presentation awards for ECRs (Early Career Researchers) only. 20% of the 270 conferences offered networking events in the form of ice-breakers, mixers and meeti