The quarantine that has been imposed to many parts of the world due to the spread of the CONVID-19 virus creates a lot of problems in transportation and in events like conferences. This may be a chance to reconsider the way that scientific conferences are organized. Although modern technologies of teleconferencing are used in a wide scale in education they are not used in conferences. So in parts of the world were the organization of gatherings is nowadays impossible, conferences have to be canceled.
A good alternative in all these trouble is simply teleconferencing, probably including an archive of video presentations and lectures. But if the scientific community will ever move to this direction there will be more benefits than just dealing with a temporary uncomfortable situation. Promoting teleconferencing and establishing a new type of e-conferences will make conferences open to a wider audience, not just to those people that make it to attend the event. Even without the quarantine, traveling to other countries and continents to attend a conference is not always an easy case and for many people is a difficult issue.
The demand for open science and data should not be restricted to the free dissemination of papers and preprints. In an era were multimedia flood the web and MOOCs are the latest trend in education, conferences should follow the same direction and become open platforms for exchanging ideas and interesting results in global scale.
A good alternative in all these trouble is simply teleconferencing, probably including an archive of video presentations and lectures. But if the scientific community will ever move to this direction there will be more benefits than just dealing with a temporary uncomfortable situation. Promoting teleconferencing and establishing a new type of e-conferences will make conferences open to a wider audience, not just to those people that make it to attend the event. Even without the quarantine, traveling to other countries and continents to attend a conference is not always an easy case and for many people is a difficult issue.
The demand for open science and data should not be restricted to the free dissemination of papers and preprints. In an era were multimedia flood the web and MOOCs are the latest trend in education, conferences should follow the same direction and become open platforms for exchanging ideas and interesting results in global scale.
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