title: A Theoretical Model for the Associative Nature of Conference Participation.
abstract: Participation in conferences is an important part of every scientific career. Conferences provide an opportunity for a fast dissemination of latest results, discussion and exchange of ideas, and broadening of scientists' collaboration network. The decision to participate in a conference depends on several factors like the location, cost, popularity of keynote speakers, and the scientist's association with the community. Here we discuss and formulate the problem of discovering how a scientist's previous participation affects her/his future participations in the same conference series. We develop a stochastic model to examine scientists' participation patterns in conferences and compare our model with data from six conferences across various scientific fields and communities. Our model shows that the probability for a scientist to participate in a given conference series strongly depends on the balance between the number of participations and non-participations during his/her early connections with the community. An active participation in a conference series strengthens the scientist's association with that particular conference community and thus increases the probability of future participations.
authors: Scientific Computing Laboratory, Institute of Physics Belgrade, University of Belgrade, Pregrevica 118, 11080 Belgrade, Serbia.|School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, P.O. Box 35-54, 11120 Belgrade, Serbia.
authors: Jelena
authors: J
authors: Smiljanić
authors: Condensed Matter Physics Division, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, 1/AF Bidhannagar, Kolkata 700064, India.
authors: Arnab
authors: A
authors: Chatterjee
authors: Aalto University School of Science, P.O. Box 11000. FI-00076 AALTO, Finland.
authors: Tomi
authors: T
authors: Kauppinen
authors: Scientific Computing Laboratory, Institute of Physics Belgrade, University of Belgrade, Pregrevica 118, 11080 Belgrade, Serbia.
authors: Marija
authors: M
authors: Mitrović Dankulov
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D003226:Congresses as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012586:Science; D012942:Social Sciences; D013269:Stochastic Processes