Virtual conference

A virtual conference is a scholarly meeting held entirely online — no physical venue, no in-person attendance — using live video sessions, virtual poster halls, and asynchronous discussion channels (chat, Q&A threads, sometimes a dedicated platform) in place of a conference centre. It is distinct from a hybrid meeting, which retains a physical venue alongside remote participation, and from a webinar series or pre-recorded video archive, which lack the live, multi-track, cross-session interaction that defines a conference.

What changes for research specifically

Beyond the near-elimination of conference travel emissions, the format changes several things specific to scholarly exchange: peer interaction shifts from hallway conversation and poster-session serendipity toward structured chat and scheduled one-to-one video slots, which most evaluations find reduces informal networking even as it increases reach; accessibility improves markedly for early-career researchers without travel funding, researchers with caregiving responsibilities, disabled colleagues, and scholars from institutions or countries facing visa or funding barriers to international travel; and presentation logistics change too — asynchronous poster viewing and recorded talks let attendees engage across time zones rather than requiring simultaneous presence, at the cost of the immediacy that drives some live discussion.

Known limitations

The dominant reported drawbacks are time-zone strain for a globally distributed audience, since no single live session time works for everyone; video-call fatigue over a multi-day programme; and a measurable drop in the informal, unplanned interaction that many researchers cite as a conference’s real value. These limitations are why the format remains most common for technical, methodological, and narrower-audience meetings rather than a full replacement for flagship in-person conferences, and why many societies have settled on structured hybrid formats instead of either extreme.

Scope note

This entry covers virtual conferences specifically in the scholarly and research context — format, accessibility, and emissions trade-offs for academic meetings — not virtual events generally.

References

• Royal Society, “Climate change and the public good,” 2022; Skiles et al., “Conference proceedings as a carbon footprint reduction strategy,” Nature Sustainability, 2022.