The Role of Conferences on the Pathway to Academic Impact: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Abstract

We provide evidence for the effectiveness of conferences in promoting academic impact, by exploiting the cancellation -due to 'Hurricane Isaac' -of the 2012 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting. We assembled a dataset of approximately 31,000 articles and quantified conference effects using difference-in-differences regressions. Within two years of being presented at the conference, articles receive an additional 15-17 downloads, and their likelihood of being cited increases by five percentage points. These advantages are permanent. We decompose these effects by authorship and provide an account of the underlying mechanisms.JEL Classification: O39, I23, L38

Sage on the Stage

“…Representation matters. For individuals, presenting research at a conference increases the likelihood that research will be read (de Leon & McQuillin, 2015) and cited (Winnik et al, 2012). Given that citation counts are often considered when measuring the impact of a researcher’s work, and factored into hiring, retention, and promotion decisions, increasing citation counts increases the likelihood of professional success.…”

Effects of appointment types on the availability of research infrastructure, work pressure, stress, and career attitudes of PhD candidates of a Dutch university

“…This means, for example, that externals probably visit fewer conferences, which can be used to establish an academic network. Furthermore, the presentation of papers at conferences is shown to increase the visibility of these papers, especially if they were written by early career researchers (de Leon & McQuillin, 2015). These benefits are missed by PhD candidates who have insufficient finances to visit scientific conferences.…”

The carbon impact of flying to economics conferences: is flying more associated with more citations?

“…And most importantly: how could we reduce the negative effects whilst preserving at least some of the beneficial effects? One of the many benefits of conferences is the increased visibility of research, which in turn drives two distinct mechanisms, maturation and advertisement (de Leon and McQuillin, 2020). 4 Through maturation the research paper improves.…”