https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.130.10

Dr Peter Kohl
Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Physiology

One of my neighbours is an accountant. A chief accountant, no less. We recently talked about work-related travel, as I shared my excitement about being able to interact with colleagues elsewhere in person again (I had just returned from one of the Gordon Research Conferences and was full of ‘buzz’ and, I felt, exciting ideas).

He was not impressed.

In his corporate world, the corona-driven move towards virtual interactions was a blessing, as far as he was concerned: one can see anyone, regardless of where they are in the world, without even having to set foot out of the door. No travel costs, no delays and missed connections, no jet lag, no time away from loved ones. In short – no need to meet (in person)! Following on from this thought and being in control of finance at a medium-sized international enterprise, he had successfully prevented the return of in-person meetings by setting travel reimbursement caps to levels below actual cost. A neat saving.

Why didn’t we have the aforementioned conference as an online event, he wondered, adding that we ought to be aware of the importance of reducing our CO2 footprint, too.

No arguing with that! So, why didn’t we have a virtual conference? After all, there are indeed very strong arguments for reducing travel and for using virtual interactions wherever plausible. But – how does one define what is plausible?

Science is a creative process that thrives on and advances by discourse. It draws inspiration from interpersonal exchange. Now – try to read a room while looking at stamp-sized portraits, assuming all participants leave their cameras on. Try to have a lively discussion among multiple individuals via audio channels that have a lag time. Try to focus on your screen, occasionally checking your own image (while hoping to not become too self-conscious), for extended periods of time. In fact, one of the (surprisingly few!) experimental studies into the effects of virtual formats on meeting outcomes concludes: “videoconferencing hampers idea generation because it focuses communicators on a screen, which prompts a narrower cognitive focus.” ¹

For international meetings, there is the additional challenge of joining up people based in different time zones. One can always aim to assign the night hours to the ‘biggest gap’ in terms of global distribution of participants, but if your meeting involves people from 16 or more time zones – it leaves a ‘night gap’ of eight hours or less. This means that some participants (usually those who are based outside Europe and the Americas) will run out of sociable hours very swiftly indeed!

It seems to me that virtual formats are great for ‘broadcasting’ (say, a one-hour lecture) or ‘receiving’ (e.g. listening to that lecture – if recorded, even in your own time or at your own pace). But, online meetings are limited in terms of size (up to a dozen people?) and duration (up to three hours?) when you need to both ‘broadcast and receive’. Yet, that is the very essence of scientific discourse.

All this is even before one considers the considerable value of informal learning from and about other teams, of peer exchange that may inform future professional decisions, and of social interactions that, among others, help to shape the scientific culture in a subject and aid the inclusion of new generations of researchers into our communities.² Unsurprisingly, the lack of networking opportunities has been highlighted as the main drawback of virtual meetings by 69% of participants in a recent Nature poll on the topic.³

Thus, virtual formats are amazingly well suited for lectures, 1:1 discussions, or small-group meetings (from a lab seminar or a project viva to those admin sessions of my neighbour). They are here to stay as one of the unquestionably positive lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic! But virtual formats are less than ideal for creative processes, and they don’t work well for international and/or multi-day meetings – regardless of whether these are small and focused, such as a Gordon Research Conference, or larger community conventions, such as Physiology 2023, when an all-hands-on-deck approach is required.ⁱ

With the latter in mind, I hope to see you at Physiology 2023 in Harrogate, where The Journal of Physiology will host a symposium on “Pacemaking in Multi-Cellular Organ Systems”. I trust this symposium may start a tradition whereby The Journal has a tangible presence in terms of the scientific programme at the main annual event of The Physiological Society. Anything that strengthens the links between The Journal and The Society’s membership is a good thing – of that, I am convinced.

The “pacemaking symposium” topic will subsequently feature as one item on an extensive list of Special Issues, which we are currently preparing. Special Issues are an exciting means of adding focus to the exemplary breadth of The Journal, and – with some 20 topics in the pipeline – they will hopefully offer a home for your most exciting research in the very near future, too! As a welcome additional benefit, we expect that this initiative will, for the first time in years, raise the annual number of manuscripts submitted to The Journal. This is important capital in our bid to manifest and consolidate a position of strength for The Society’s international flagship and main income generator.

I should like to conclude by noting that this will be my last PN column as Editor-in-Chief: I shall be stepping down from this highly esteemed position, which I feel fortunate to have been allowed to fill for a time. I would like to thank the Editorial Board of The Journal for the wonderfully creative, highly constructive, and impeccably respectful interactions, The Society’s Publications’ Team (past and present) for their professionalism, commitment, patience and support for my strategic vision of ‘procuring more and publishing better papers’, and The Society for the opportunity to serve.

As a journal, we are on the right track, I think. Let’s see.ⁱⁱ

References

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04643-y
2. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2023/03/13/scientificconferences-why-meeting-face-to-face-still-matters/
3. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00513-1

Footnotes

1. Whether there is a place for large face-to-face ‘PR events’ of institutions and societies is, perhaps, questionable.
2. In keeping with the custom of my previous columns, let me add that, while “you can’t say we’re satisfied – you can’t say we never tried” (Richards / Jagger, Goats Head Soup, 1973).