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The purpose of this study was to explore the relative importance of various attributes (i.e. the total cost of attending, conference organizer, publishing opportunities for an academic career and personal development, reputation as measured by the number of conferences held, location and size) in terms of their ability to impact the decision of attendees in their selection of which academic conference to attend.

Conjoint analysis was used to examine the relative importance of various attributes to impact an attendee’s decision to select an academic conference (i.e. the total cost of attending, conference organizer, publishing opportunities for an academic career and personal development, reputation as measured by the number of conferences held, location and size).

The choice-based conjoint analysis revealed that the most crucial attributes for attending an academic conference were the total cost of attending the conference (28% of relative importance) and the conference organizer (28%).

Since the total cost of attending a conference is one of the top two attributes, conference organizers should reduce the costs as much as possible. Recommendations include choosing a university venue instead of a hotel or conference center and offering multiple options for registration passes (i.e. one-day pass). However, organizers should be careful about meals provided during the conference program, as meals have a positive effect on attendees’ decisions.

This study introduces to the literature a new indicator for selecting an academic conference – the reputation of the conference as measured by the number of times it had been held. In previous studies, this variable was not considered in the context of selecting an academic conference.

A sample of conference proceedings received at the National Lending Library in 1970 has been analysed for publication delay, physical form, subject, publisher, size, language and presence of indexes, synopses, and discussions. The interdependence of these attributes with one another is discussed. Of the conferences that ought to have indexes only 22% have subject indexes and 26% author indexes. One in every four conferences deals with medicine. The median of publication delay is twelve months. Two‐thirds of all conference proceedings have from nine to fifty papers. The social sciences separate out as a distinct group having long publication delays, few large conferences, and being published mainly by university publishers.

This study aims to explore the benefits of participation in a topic-relevant business conference as a learning and professional development apparatus for senior managers of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It analyzes the experiences of 12 Australian SME senior managers who participated in a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) business conference in Hong Kong.

Data were collected through pre- and post-conference attendance interviews. Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick’s (2005) four levels framework was used to analyze the effectiveness of business conferences on the participants at four different levels of the framework: reaction, learning, behavior and results.

This study finds that the business conference has shown effectiveness for the participants at the reaction (Level 1), learning (Level 2) and behavior (Level 3), indicating that participation in a topic-relevant business conference is useful for the learning and professional development of SME managers. However, only a moderate level of results (Level 4) was identified from attending the BRI conference, which implies that the content and quality of the business conference may influence the achievement of expected results.

This paper contributes a new understanding of the benefits of topic-relevant business conference participation as a learning and professional development apparatus for SME senior managers.

Conferences bring scientists together and provide one of the most timely means for disseminating new ideas and cutting-edge works. The importance of conferences in many scientific areas is testified by quantitative indexes. The main goal of this paper is to investigate a novel research question: is there any correlation between the impact of scientific conferences and the venue where they took place?

To measure the impact of conferences, the authors conducted a large scale analysis on the bibliographic data extracted from 3,838 Computer Science conference series and over 2.5 million papers spanning more than 30 years of research. To quantify the “touristicity'' of a venue, the authors exploited indexes about the attractiveness of a venue from reports of the World Economic Forum, and have extracted four country-wide and two city-wide touristic indexes, which measure the attractiveness and the touristicity of any country or city.

The authors found out that the two aspects are related, and the correlation with conference impact is stronger when considering country-wide touristic indexes, achieving a correlation value of more than 0.5 when considering the average citations, and more than 0.8 when considering the total citations. Moreover the almost linear correlation with the Tourist Service Infrastructure index attests the specific importance of tourist/accommodation facilities in a given country.

There are two main limitations of this work: (1) the use of citations to evaluate the attractiveness of the conferences and (2) the difficulty to formally define the touristic attractiveness of a venue.

Starting from the results concerning the correlation between different touristicity indicators and the outcome of a conference in terms of citations, it would be possible to support conference organizers in their decisions. For instance, they could plan in advance conference venues considering the same touristicity indicators, comparing different options and selecting cities which have high scores. This will allow for rapid planning of a conference venue, encompassing the easiness of travel and the attractivity of a venue, hence increasing the potential outcomes of the conference.

Regarding the social implications, this study will enable the possibility for municipalities and conference organizers to understand what it can be improved in a specific venue to make it more attractive. This may include better transport connections or selecting cities which show a high potential regarding the touristicity index. Regarding the willingness of a researcher to submit a paper to a specific conference, it would be unaltered, meaning that what the results show is that there is already a mental process, before submitting a paper to a conference, which considers these indicators.

This is the first attempt to focus on the relationship of venue characteristics to conference papers. The results open up new possibilities, such as supporting conference organizers in their organization efforts.

Prior studies of how service quality evolves during the service delivery process either have used aggregate case data or have not obtained objective measurements of the actual dimensions of the service encounter on an individual basis. Reports on a study of a service delivery process in a hotel. Its conference day guests rated the delivery process based on four distinct service encounters: arrival, coffee break, lunch and conference room. The aim was to investigate how quality factors were related to their respective encounters and how cumulative satisfaction levels impact on each other and over time. Average satisfaction levels for each of the four encounters were found to be significantly different. Moreover, there was a clear trend in the cumulative satisfaction results. Arrival resulted in high satisfaction, the coffee break was not as satisfying and lunch rated the worst. Satisfaction rose again after the conference room experience. A factor analysis of all the questions, for a hypothesized four‐factor solution, explained 72 per cent of the variation. All four encounters loaded highly and collectively on four distinct factors. Finally, a logistic regression model was used to rank the importance of the quality factors on their respective encounters. This information can be used to assist with the quality improvement of each encounter.

The College of St. Germain is a private, liberal arts college in the U.S. Midwest. Several faculty members developed and launched an academic business and economics conference. Despite of a lack of funding from the college, and a general apathy among other colleagues, the conference became financially self-sufficient and grew each year, with increasing attendance and submissions from many international scholars. Part A of the case focuses on the beginning, planning, and growth stages of the conference, and culminates with the successful conclusion of the third annual conference and planning for the fourth conference. Part B focuses on the fourth and fifth conferences, and concludes with the surprising cancellation of the sixth annual conference. The case highlights the challenges and accomplishments of the conference chairpersons and the organizing committee, as well as management, marketing, and leadership factors that contributed to the ultimate demise of the conference.

The purpose of this article is to report on sessions presented at QQML 2013.

The approach is an informal review of sessions attended.

This conference report includes the author's brief notes after attending various sessions.

This is an original conference report written after attendance at QQML.

THE INTRODUCTION of the pre‐recorded tape cassette in the 1970's made many predict that within ten years there would be no gramophone records or gramophones being marketed, and that the cassette would be the supreme means of distributing recorded sound. Just how wrong that prediction was can be seen in any audio shop in the country, where huge displays of the latest record albums are to be found next to racks of similar cassettes. Far from sounding the knell for records, cassettes have probably been instrumental in furthering their popularity, by way of the spin‐off in technical advances, marketing, and the ease of distribution.

Provides an introduction to selected papers and an overview of the conference theme tracks, participants, and keynote address. The theme of the conference was “Teaching the treasures: connecting students, information skills and resources”. LOEX‐of‐the‐West 2004 marked ten years from the first conference held at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Presenters and attendees reflected on present and future trends in library instruction and information literacy within academic libraries and higher education.