An academic conference or scientific conference is a one-day or multiday meeting which researchers present and discuss their work within their field. Attending an academic conference is an exciting opportunity to build networks with other academics and experts and exchange stimulating ideas. Academic conferences are not just for academics, it can be attended by various groups of people with certain expertise and profession from local to global. Some conferences focus on highly-specialized topics and are usually organized by institution, associations, or group of independent researchers. For some researchers, academic conference help to make their research process easier. Thus, the academic conference is a crucial part of academic life.
As a stage for academic career development, some researchers began to choose to become conference organizers. They seemed to rest for a while from a busy moment in the campus or laboratory, and meet with their circle that will give birth and transmit constructive ideas. However, conferences held by certain institutions experience convoluted bureaucratic constraints, as well as financial problems that tend to be wasteful. As a social enterprise committed to being dedicated to the education world, we (Research Synergy Foundation) would like to share our experience in managing international conference which is one of our featured program. Presented as a speaker of the webinar is Mrs. Santi Rahmawati, a founder and director of Global Network Operation of Research Synergy Foundation, also served as Director of Scholarvein. More than 120 participants were engaged virtually in this webinar.
Mrs. Santi began her presentation by emphasizing four common questions in managing international conference; Man, Budget, Process, and Output. She also discussed some of the benefits for organizing international conference for institution that includes publication matters, university ranking, international outlook, accreditation, credibility, and positioning, develop stronger research groups and collaboration, and extra non-tuition fees. Conferences can come in any shape, like academic conference, virtual conference, trade conference, UnConference, business conference, and etc. As more gatherings get shut down due to current pandemic outbreak, virtual conferences appeared to be very popular as an alternative to any various meetings.
Mrs. Santi then gave a detailed description of the process of managing a conference which she divided into 3 stages: pre-during-post process. The description explains what actually needs to be prepared rather than what most people sees. In terms of publication as the final outcome which is usually awaited by the participants, she illustrated a complete process which happened immediately after the conference was over. By applying these 3 stages, RSF ensures that the process of publishing participants articles runs properly. Both the organizer and the participant must work together and support each other during the publication process. RSF have affiliated with hundreds of national and international journals and publishers with various indexation. With these sources, we hope to provide greater ease and effectiveness to disseminate knowledge contribution across the globe. Conference management also requires the role of appropriate stakeholders to create a conducive ecosystem. They also have to make sure that the budget is reasonable and well-allocated. A good collaboration between each parts will result in a successful conference.
In RSF development journey, we always learn and make our utmost effort to manage conferences effectively and efficiently. To achieve this, we complete each process by creating a system that embraces every process and help to answer various challenges in managing conference. We create a global research ecosystem that includes: Scholarvein as our integrated conference operating system, Research Synergy Institute as an enhancement and learning platform, RSF Press as an integrated international journals system, and Reviewer Track as a hub for worldwide reviewers. We will keep track a lot of important moving parts in every process. Therefore, we are open to any collaborative cooperation to help managing successful scientific event.
