Akin to the problems in scientific publishing driven by the ever-increasing influence of for-profit publishers since the 1950s and particularly emphasized in the past two decades, problems are also becoming clearer in the organization of scientific conferences. The consequences have potential to be similarly severe, given the central role of societies and annual meetings, alongside publishing, in the research endeavour. Here we briefly outline two issues we consider important to address. The first is directly related to PEEER’s goals for improving the publishing environment; the second is the risk of repeating the errors made in outsourcing publishing by also outsourcing conferences.  Consequently, we advocate for two major changes.

1. Stop endorsing for-profit publishers at conferences

The sight is familiar. A booth at the annual meeting of your society run by a for-profit publisher. They’re possibly also listed as a sponsor. And they may be acknowledged during the meeting by, for example, supporting attendance through student travel awards or recognition through best thesis awards.

On the face of it, this seems like a good deal. By paying for the booth and/or making a donation, the publisher has increased accessibility to the meeting for folk who otherwise could not attend. They’re also providing information on journals in which attendees can publish, perhaps with a conference-specific reduction in article processing charges (APCs). And they’re available to chat about opportunities for editing, special issues, etc. 

But at what cost? The rest of the year, this publisher is charging APCs that are rising faster than inflation and increasingly unaffordable to many of the conference attendees, especially early career academics such as the very ones intended to be helped through travel and thesis awards. The publishers are pressuring researchers to publish more, implicitly or otherwise. They are cutting back on support for journal editorial teams, production, etc. Publication quality is diminishing. Increasingly, the publishers are in conflict with academic editorial boards. In many cases, they are run by the publisher’s employees, not by a suite of editorially independent academics in the discipline. In short, despite contributions to the meeting, overall the publisher is negatively affecting the entire scientific/academic community that conferences are intended to serve.

The trade-off is clear. For-profit publishers are getting far more out of their attendance at conferences than are researchers. The drawbacks of for-profit publishers are at minimum turned a blind eye by the society, but more likely implicitly condoned or endorsed by the society. Their presence suggests they are partners in the scientific enterprise when in fact they are exploitative. This is increasingly a problematic situation: ‘greywashing’ the costs exacted upon researchers by for-profit publishing via a comparatively miniscule investment in a meeting. (Historically, the investment made by journals with which we are familiar was the equivalent of about one-half of their APC (i.e. ~$2500), out of 600 APCs or equivalent subscription income [APCs at hybrid journals are typically correlated with subscription costs] per year).

Understanding the relative costs and benefits of publishers at conferences starts with knowing the pros and cons of different meeting-sponsorhip and publishing models. We encourage all societies to be transparent in their criteria for sponsorship and to include requirements that publishers be transparent about publishing profits at their booths.

We commend, for example, the annual Evolution 2025 meeting in Athens, Georgia, for a noticeable absence of for-profit publishers, instead giving the floor to not-for-profit academic presses including but not limited to those which deliver the societies’ journals.

2. Resist the commoditization of conferences

In parallel, we are also seeing conferences and our control over them being sold to for-profit enterprises. Like predatory journals, we’ve seen an increase in clearly predatory conferences (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02360-2) but there is also a more pernicious spread of conferences being run by for-profit companies using for-profit facilities. This is not to say there are not benefits – workload for academics is lower, people familiar with and practiced in conference organization run the operations which should be smoother, software platforms can ease upload and delivery of talks, automated systems synchronize talks across rooms. But the question is, again: At what cost?    

Most obviously, working with for-profit companies inevitably [a] jacks up the prices overall, which [b] increases costs to participants and/or decreases accessibility, and [c] puts the increasing profit into shareholders’ pockets rather than re-investing it in the academic enterprise. There are, as in publishing, smaller independent not-for-profit organizations helping plan and organize meetings, which offer important services and opportunities and experience.

There was a time, not so long ago, that conferences were organized primarily by committees of academics and housed primarily by academic institutions. While this was a lot of work for folk, it kept costs lower, imbued meetings with local institutional diversity (not the generic conference hall), and margins went back into the universities and/or societies.

This is, like publishing, a large problem for the academic community to address. Understanding it’s magnitude and consequences will start with understanding the economics of different models for conference organization, and we encourage all societies to be transparent about costs, partners, and profits and to require the same of hired for-profit organizers.

We commend, for example, the International Association for Vegetation Science for hosting their 67th meeting at the University of Northern Colorado, The International Biogeography Society for choosing an academic institutional host (Aarhus University) for their 2026 meeting, and the Western Society of Naturalists for their academic conference organization team.

Closing remarks

The preceding ruminations are not intended to judge any particular society or their conference, but simply to highlight a rising concern. Likewise, the commendations are not exhaustive nor representative, just examples drawn from meetings we attend. (We welcome other examples in the comments!) We appreciate societies’ efforts to deliver affordable and accessible meetings with interesting programs and hope they continue. We acknowledge there is no one-size-fits-all conference model, as all conferences work with multiple constraints. Therefore, we don’t expect societies to entirely change their conference model overnight, but we hope that considering the issues raised here might lead to fruitful discussions, ideally with memberships, on the path they want to take to best serve their community in an ethical and equitable environment.

Michael N Dawson
University of California, Merced, USA

Fabricio Villalobos
Instituto de Ecología A.C. – INECOL, Mexico