Why do we pay to present at conferences?

Question

I recently presented at a conference abroad (my first one), and the entry fee was $50 USD. Now, as this was my first conference, the concept of paying to present at a conference is still a foreign one to me. I can't really wrap my head around submitting an abstract, it getting accepted and then paying to present about the work mentioned in it. So my question is fairly straightforward. What is the purpose of a presenter paying for a conference? Isn't it for the greater good not to have barriers for showcasing research?

Edit: I see this question has generated of a lot of discussion. Let me explain some of my reasoning in choosing the accepted answer. In the region I am from (the Caribbean), due to economic hardships finding the money to pay for conferences deters many young scientists from even thinking about attending. The conferences themselves generate a fairly significant audience from graduate students, faulty members and the general public wishing to understand the scientific concepts presented (all of whom enter for free). I can't help but think how much more productive the scientific activity in the region would be if the people wanting to present didn't have to pay. Many of you are saying that $50 USD is nothing, but are neglecting the various exchange rates it takes to obtain said money. At an exchange rate of 121 to 1, $50 USD could buy me food for 2-3 weeks in my home country. I asked this question without any mention of these things because, in the most general sense, paying for conferences seems, to me, to only provide barriers to sharing results and boosting academic (read scientific) activity, and I wanted to have an idea of what others thought about a (somewhat one dimensional) version of this idea.

Answer 1

First off I would like to say: apparently my experience is not normal. From most of the answers/comments on here it seems most people pay to present at conferences. I guess I'll recognize that in fairness.

However...that has not been my experience with conferences in the computer programming field. Yes, conferences cost money to put on...which is why people attending them pay money. A person presenting is part of the conference...what the people attending are paying to see! That's like charging an actor admission to their theater performance...they are the performance!

I have not personally paid to speak at conferences.

---

EDIT: Many in the comments have said this is academic vs. business. I do not think this is correct. I believe it is field vs. field. In the last conference I presented at the only presenters that weren't actively in academia at that moment were myself and a representative from Adobe. In fact it was neat because it resulted in myself getting to invited to speak at some colleges...which I also did not pay to do :)

I think at this point, mixing my experiences with the experiences explained on this thread, it would seem that if you're in a field with enough people attending conferences where you can have a distinct set of "presenters" vs. "attenders" then the presenters will likely not pay. If the community in your field is small enough that getting together enough people for a conference pretty much means most of the "attenders" WILL be "presenters" then you're likely gonna have to pay your share of setting up the conference. I'm sure there's also fields in-between where you may pay a lesser rate or here it's hit-and-miss from conference to conference on whether you'll be paying to present.

In the end it seems experiences vary WIDELY on this subject.

Answer 2

It costs a lot of money to put conferences on. Generally, the fees are to help cover this.

In many fields, the majority of people attending are also presenting. If they didn't charge people to present, they wouldn't be able to generate enough revenue from attendees to make it work.

Note that $50 is very cheap for an academic conference--in my experience, most cost hundreds of dollars. Even then, in many cases the conference fees don't cover the whole cost of the conference, and the difference has to be made up with sponsorship or from other sources.

Answer 3

I had your same reaction at my first conference. Now, I have just finished helping to organize a small conference (computer science). As @dan1111 wrote, conference really do not come for free.

These are typical items you need to cover with the registration fees:

• Room costs (if the conference is held at a conference center / hotel; credits @Andrew)
• Welcome reception
• Coffee breaks
• Lunches
• Social dinner
• Water for the speakers
• Accommodation for keynote speakers
• Printed proceedings (common to have them in CS)
• Excursions (small excursions are often included in the fees. Sometimes they are partially covered by the fees to offer a discount to the participants) including transportation
• Best paper award

Some conferences cover the registration fees to the organizers, as well (not in our case).

Also keep in mind that for small-to-medium conferences, you can never guess the number of participants with high accuracy. If you pay for 80 participants to the catering service but only 50 participants show up, you lose the money.

Finally, sometimes you just have a wrong guess and make some little profit out of the registrations. That money often goes back to the organizing university (or the societies) to hopefully cover up for other research-related expenses.

Answer 4

As the other answers say, conferences cost money to present, and so they have to charge to recoup their expenses.

But there's another thing to think about. You paid the $50, right? If you didn't believe you were getting at least $50 worth of value from the presentation, then you wouldn't have paid.

If I offered you the opportunity to present your talk in my living room, while my kids played video games around you, you presumably wouldn't have paid $50. (If you would, then please email me. We'll talk.) Less ridiculously, there are many other conferences that you wouldn't pay $50 to present at, because they're not relevant to you (landscaping golf courses? String theory?) or because they don't have the right people, or are in the wrong place; you've made the decision that they don't offer you $50 worth of value, while this conference does.

So it's not merely your presentation that you're paying for. You've made the decision that presenting your abstract to the people at the conference, with the attendant benefits of exposure, conversation, feedback, or whatever else it was that you value, was worth $50.

We don't know everything you consider in this choice, but it was a choice. The point is that you've already made the decision that you're getting at least $50 worth of value out of this.

So the simple answer to your question, "Why do we pay to present at conferences?" is that there's been a general agreement that the presenting at certain conferences has value to us.

Answer 5

Paid by the particular niche commnunity

The way many academic conferences work, it's a gathering made by a certain circle/niche of researchers for themselves. The conference is not for showcasing research to outsiders, it is for exchanging research between themselves.

One way or another, having such a gathering costs some money. Generally, no one outside that niche community is interested the conference. This means that the research community itself is going to pay for it one way or another is they want this event, and the simplest and possibly fairest way is to have all participants chip in to cover the expenses.

The other alternative is if some organization of that research niche is able and willing to sponsor the expenses for everyone - in many cases a host institution will provide facilities and/or organization&hosting labor for free, so that the participation fee is needed only for things such as food/catering and invited speakers and thus can be very low such as $50 per participant.

Answer 6

Some journals do not seek a fee from you to publish your paper, even though they might incur costs in the processing of your paper or in its publication. However, a paper presentation at a conference is quite different because, aside from the costs in the processing of your paper or in its publication (in the conference proceedings), the conference organizers also have additional costs (for the venue, the food, the honoraria paid to the invited speakers, etc.). Think of it as paying for your attendance to the conference, that is, payment is required for everyone attending the conference, including those who present papers (except of course, the organizers and the invited speakers).

Answer 7

The fact, that why are you supposed to pay and where does that money go, has been covered at most in other answers. It definitely justifies the fees from the perspective of an organizer. However, the other perspective is probably more related to you as well as of greater importance for the participants, especially the presenters of their work. In other words, what does one get from a conference which can not be achieved otherwise? hence, justifies the money paid, agreed?

This is more about the essence of the conference. The simple most answer is, it's the opportunity that conferences provide. Moreover, conferences are favored over journals because of the valuable instant feedback from fellow researchers in the field. Getting an earlier feedback is vital for the initial stages of research which can be best accomplished through conferences. Another important factor is to have an opportunity to grow your network, which is not only beneficial in research and collaboration but also is fundamental to getting job in academia.

Answer 8

I can think of a couple of factors

1. At many smaller conferences most of the attendees will be presenting something.
2. It's often easier to get your university to pay for you to go to a conference if you are presenting and very difficult if you are not (which leads to point 1)

Answer 9

Apart from paying to attend a conference, it is increasingly common to pay for submitting an abstract.

Why? Because processing abstracts incurs costs on organisers. There is computer infrastructure, more than one person will read the abstract, abstracts may need to be typeset to fit into a printed abstract book and/or on an online system, etc. As submitting an abstract is typically a necessary requirement for presenting at a conference, an abstract submission fee is effectively a conference presentation fee, on top of the regular conference attendance fee.

Answer 10

I have not read many of the answers, but I am pretty sure I present a unique point of view, which needs to be said my way.

Just like my above mentioned emotion, my research has something unique to say. Most Journals in the Finance area where I publish continue to charge fees , in obvious disparity to other fields for entertaining your paper and allocating time and resources of an editor and reviewer. These two asides are required to understand the context of my answer. I understand the answer could have been structured with the main idea presented first but apparently most readers also like to factcheck parts of an answer before reading it. Allowing journals and conferences sto charge for presentation does not imply we are paying indiscriminately for editorial arbitrariness as below mentioned comments would read. The payment significantly reduces the workload of the editors and allows the submitter to a journal or conference confirm he is worthy of the paper as he pays the fees. That he does not do so or the editor does not follow his given brief that leads to no guarantees from this fact alone does not reduce the merit of this argument or its empirical results. Most paid journals are higher ranked.

I think conferences force you to pay so that they are relatively sure that your paper has something valuable to present to the world. Given that others have paid to hear you , the content of your presentation need to be vetted . This is assured by using a single/double blind paper review but due to the presence of alternate views and because of the human ness of any reviewer, the peer review process is inadequate to test the veracity of the rpresented research. However, in combination with the fact that as a researcher I have to scour for funding for every conference submission, and the peer review process from a known researcher, I make the attempt to produce Original research with enough facts to relate and appeal to an audience which may not be my objective if I was engaged in just pure research which could get published in home school research journals without any conference inputs and wihtout verifying it with researchers.

The second reason we pay to present at conferences is entirely logistical. It is difficult for a conference to pay for the location and various arrangements without participants defraying expenses of the conference / association. Of course the base rate for the conference is usually highly related to the reputation of the Conference and thus reason 1 is much more important.

Also I can relate to the researcher posing the question as it is entirely impossible for me to pay for any conference out of pocet and I have to arrange for funding every time I travel.

On the flip side of course, there are conferences where quality material is foregone as the pnumber of paying researchers is limite but that is just a function of still not having enough conferences in the world to present your research given the number of researchers joining ranks every year and getting aware of and using research methods effectively.