Access

News

Nature 438, 264-265 (17 November 2005) | doi:10.1038/438264b; Published online 16 November 2005

Small conferences pay their way

Kendall Powell

Top

Survey suggests it's good to talk.

The time and money spent attending small scientific meetings is more than paid back through accelerated research, suggests a survey by a conference organizer."The presumption is that meetings are beneficial, but the actual data to say that something positive happens are pretty scarce," says James Aiken, president of Keystone Symposia, the non-profit meetings organization in Silverthorne, Colorado, that carried out the survey.