Live Coverage of Scientific Conferences Using Web Technologies

Allyson L Lister,Michael Kuhn,Roland Krause,Reinhard Schneider,Oliver Hofmann,Bettina Roth,Ruchira S Datta

doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000563

Abstract

91Centre for Integrated Systems Biology of Ageing and Nutrition, Institute for Ageing and Health, Newcastle University, Campus for Ageing and Vitality, Newcastle uponTyne, United Kingdom, 2School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, 3QB3 Institute, University of California, Berkeley,California, United States of America, 4Harvard School of Public Health, Department of Biostatistics, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, 5Department ofComputer Science, Free University Berlin, Berlin, Germany, 6Department of Computational Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Berlin,Germany, 7Biotec, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany, 8International Society for Computational Biology, La Jolla, California, United States of America, 9Computational andStructural Biology Unit, EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany

Highlights

Conferences are important hubs of scientific communication, facilitating networking in ways that traditional methods of remote information dissemination cannot match
While traditional publishinghouse journalism has broadly remained unchanged, many scientists are publishing their notes on the Internet, accelerating the spread of information to interested audiences
With the increasing popularity of live blogging, conference organizers need to consider how such techniques relate to existing policies

Summary

Introduction

Conferences are important hubs of scientific communication, facilitating networking in ways that traditional methods of remote information dissemination cannot match. With the increasing popularity of live blogging, conference organizers need to consider how such techniques relate to existing policies. While publication of information at some level is a primary goal of all conferences, there are diverse technological, political, and social factors associated with live blogging that organizers should consider.

Results

Conclusion