International scientific meetings: relation between structure and function.
Increasing pressure is being placed on the scientific community to evaluate research activities. Scientific meetings consume a small but important fraction of the research budget. Audit of a well established series of scientific meetings showed that they met their immediate objectives in that they were international and multidisciplinary and provided a forum in which all participants actively contributed to discussion. The meetings had a positive outcome for the participants, leading in many cases to the subsequent exchange of research material (60% of participants) and to the establishment of collaborative research projects (31%). The impact of the meetings on the scientific community at large was assessed by citation analysis, which showed that the proceedings were cited early, often, and over a substantial period.
D001315:Australia; D003226:Congresses as Topic / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005060:Europe; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D006801:Humans; D012106:Research; D014481:United States