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It explains the rapid shift triggered by early superspreader events, continued uncertainty from variants, and the difficulty of achieving a return to pre-pandemic norms. The report highlights unanswered questions on sustainable financial models, format design, and audience engagement, and outlines an upcoming cohort project funded by the Sloan Foundation to develop long-term multi-modal planning.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/covid-19-and-the-future-of-the-annual-meeting/332442/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/covid-19-and-the-future-of-the-annual-meeting/332442.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"wps_ap_test_251126_0180","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-30","2026-09-21",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":29},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"Why were annual meetings disrupted in early 2020?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The outbreak of COVID-19 rapidly halted in-person conferences, including events linked to superspreader dynamics. By mid-March, societies faced abrupt operational constraints that required immediate format changes.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What challenges do organizers face when planning future conference formats?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"Organizers must weigh the successes and failures of recent experiments amid ongoing public health uncertainty. Key issues include identifying sustainable financial models and determining how multi-modal formats can engage new audiences in scholarly communication.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What future work is planned by Ithaka S+R and partners?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"With funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Ithaka S+R and JSTOR Labs will convene a cohort of scholarly societies to explore and develop long-term approaches for annual meetings across traditional, hybrid, and fully online modes, plus related programming.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},332442,1790742207,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":29,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145,"preview_page_count":4},8796095027276,"https://avatar.qwps.com/avatar/d3BzX2FwX3Rlc3RfMjUxMTI2XzAxODA=","COVID-19 and the Future of the Annual Meeting  \nDylan Ruediger Danielle Cooper  \nIthaka S+R provides research and strategic guidance to help the academic and cultural communities serve the public good and navigate economic, demographic, and technological change. Ithaka S+R is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit with a mission to improve access to knowledge and education for people around the world. We believe education is key to the wellbeing of individuals and society, and we work to make it more effective and affordable.  \nCopyright 2021 ITHAKA. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of the license, please see [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .  \nITHAKA is interested in disseminating this brief as widely as possible. Please contact us with any questions about using the report: [research@ithaka.org](research@ithaka.org).  \nIntroduction  \nIn February 2020, the Biogen conference in Boston, Massachusetts, became one of the first superspreader events in the United States—one now linked to perhaps 300,000 cases ofCOVID- 19.1 By mid-March, in-person conferences, a staple of scholarly communication and community, came to an abrupt halt. For the many professional societies for whom a conference is a core offering, the necessity of charting a new path for their annual meeting was among the most difficult organizational challenges created by the pandemic. As one meeting director noted, the experience was “like flying an airplane while you’re building it.”2 The experiments of 2020-21 were born of necessity but aligned to pressures that had been building for years.  \nFor a brief moment this spring, it was perhaps tempting to assume that the pandemic was behind us, and that conferences could and would quickly return to “normal.” The Delta variant has made it clear that there is no clear path back to the pre-pandemic society meeting and has forced another round of cancellations and format shifts for conferences originally planned as inperson events. Given the ongoing uncertainty in global, national, and local, public health situations, conference organizers must reckon with the successes and failures of recent experiments with conference modalities. Much has already been learned, but important questions, ranging from identifying sustainable financial models to support new and mixed meeting formats and how those formats might engage new audiences in new forms of scholarly communication, remain unanswered. What does seem clear is that even after the pandemic recedes, many conferences and other types of scholarly meetings and programming are unlikely to simply return to the old status quo.3  \nGiven the ongoing uncertainty in global, national, and local, public health situations, conference organizers must reckon with the successes and failures of recent experiments with conference modalities.  \nWith generous funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Ithaka S+R and JSTOR Labs will soon organize a cohort of scholarly societies to explore and develop the future of the scholarly meeting—through traditional, hybrid, and fully online modes for annual meetings, regional conferences, webinars, and professional education programs.4 Through a combination of  \n1 Michael Wines and Amy Harmon, “What Happens When a Superspreader Event Keeps Spreading,” The New York Times, December 12, 2020, [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/us/biogen-conference-covid-spread.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/us/biogen-conference-covid-spread.html; Farah Stockman and Kim)[; Farah Stockman and Kim](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/us/biogen-conference-covid-spread.html; Farah Stockman and Kim)[ ](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/us/biogen-conference-covid-spread.html; Farah Stockman and Kim)[Barker](Barker), “How a Premier U.S. Drug Company Became a Virus ‘Super Spreader,’” The New York Times, April 12, 2020 , [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/","cbCaifLxSE9sFr9A","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaifLxSE9sFr9A","pdf",436979,17,"English","# Introduction\n## COVID-19 disruption of annual meetings\n## No clear path back to pre-pandemic norms\n## Need to evaluate experiments and open questions\n## Cohort initiative to develop future scholarly meetings","[{\"question\":\"Why were annual meetings disrupted in early 2020?\",\"answer\":\"The outbreak of COVID-19 rapidly halted in-person conferences, including events linked to superspreader dynamics. By mid-March, societies faced abrupt operational constraints that required immediate format changes.\"},{\"question\":\"What challenges do organizers face when planning future conference formats?\",\"answer\":\"Organizers must weigh the successes and failures of recent experiments amid ongoing public health uncertainty. Key issues include identifying sustainable financial models and determining how multi-modal formats can engage new audiences in scholarly communication.\"},{\"question\":\"What future work is planned by Ithaka S+R and partners?\",\"answer\":\"With funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Ithaka S+R and JSTOR Labs will convene a cohort of scholarly societies to explore and develop long-term approaches for annual meetings across traditional, hybrid, and fully online modes, plus related programming.\"}]","COVID-19 and the Future of the Annual Meeting | PDF",1789998214,43]