# Rethinking Academic Conferences in the Age of Pandemic
## 4 Discussion  
Given the length of time that may be required to continue practicing precaution measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there will undoubtedly be far more deleterious impacts of the pandemic on academic research. Apart from the COVID-19 pandemic, other pandemics such as monkeypox also may hit academic conferences. Holding onsite conferences could be risky in the face of the pandemic. Therefore, orchestrating virtual academic conferences could be a common way for scientists to brainstorm research ideas, although there are increasing negative voices toward virtual conferences. There could be three major reasons that scientists do not support virtual conferences. First, as principal investigators of research funds, they cannot use the traveling budget. Second, they lose the chance for meeting and making friends as well as enjoying the leisure time in the conference venues. Third, they more or less feel themselves not to be part of a research community, as togethemess is gone due to the virtuality of the conferences. The last but not least is that not only scientists but also ordinary people just want to travel for the sake of their mental well-being. Note that the pros and cons of academic virtual conferences are still in dispute. However, the COVID-19 pandemic should not be the only thing to blame for virtual conferences. Going virtual should be considered as an alternative for future academic conferences regardless of whether a pandemic is prevailing or not. Young scientists, especially students, could be the major attendees of academic conferences. Not all young scientists are lucky enough to receive financial support for conference registrations. Meanwhile, most, if not all, conferences require registrations as well as paper presentations, either orally or by the poster. For attendees who registered for the conferences but cannot travel to present their conference papers due to unexpected issues such as visa application rejection and flight cancellation, as stated on the websites of many conferences, the authors may have risk having their accepted papers rejected by the conference organization committees. For scientists who cannot attend conferences in person, they are appealing to virtual conferences. Figure 2: **Statistical results of the registration fees and discounts for virtual conferences held in 2020 and 2021. (A,B) The distributions of the registration fees for members of virtual conferences, respectively, held in 2020 and 2021. (C,D) The distributions of the discounts of registration fees for members of virtual conferences held in 2020 and 2021 with respect to the top 10 countries and the 10 disciplines. **For scientists who have limited financial support, even though virtual conferences charge the same amount of money as onsite conferences do, they are still appealing as virtual conferences as travel and accommodation expenditures, can be avoided. Considering the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual conferences are still necessary in some places. However, the pandemic should not be the shield for conference organization committees to make money from the attendees. Academic conferences have existed for decades. The COVID-19 pandemic provides us an opportunity to contemplate the possible revisions to academic conferences. Here, we suggest the following major initiatives. (1) Virtual conferences should always be an option in the future for conference attendees regardless of whether there is a pandemic or not. A mixed-mode can provide flexibilities both for attendees and the conference organization committees. Attendees can save both time and money if these issues are their concerns, while organization committees can exempt themselves from tedious and laborious efforts in conference logistics. (2) Virtual conferences should charge much less than onsite conferences do. This initiative not only puts an end to any commercial purposes in the name of hosting academic conferences but also avoids unnecessary project budgets and expenditures.