AiScholar – Connecting Academic Research and its Dissemination- Be a Connector in the Field of Academic Research

Received 23 Aug, 2022

Accepted 08 Sep, 2022

Published 15 Oct, 2022

Academic conference is an important way of academic exchange and achievement publication besides academic journals. The global epidemic of COVID-19 since 2022 has impacted academic conferences which normally focus on onsite face-to-face exchanges, as well as the entire international conference industry chain, as particularly reflected in the ICCA Annual Statistics Study 2020. AiScholar, with its one-stop academic service online platform SaaS solution, has been effectively supporting academic exchange via conferences and research publications against the epidemic for a vast number of researchers from China and the world, and well practicing its mission as a connector in the field of academic research.

Academic conferences are an important form for researchers to conduct academic exchanges, present and share their results, hold face-to-face discussions, and build up their research networks. Each year, tens of thousands of international or regional academic conferences are held in various disciplines and fields, bringing together researchers from all over the world, with different languages and cultural backgrounds, and different research career stages. Leading scholars draw up the latest frontier development blueprint of the discipline, benefiting their peers especially those of early careers. Using modern digital and internet technologies, conference organizers have also established their relatively stable paradigm, which includes program planning, promotion, hosting and publication arrangements, etc. However, many cumbersome logistic factors in the conference organization process are still bothering researchers with their precious time and efforts.

Usually, a successful international academic conference takes a year to prepare¹ which includes, pre-event stage preparation, proposing conference theme, organizing committees along with sessions, inviting the keynote speakers, creating the conference website functionalities including registration, the online submission with peer-review administration, publishing information, and promoting the campaign. In addition to the steps listed above, conducting the conference onsite or online, or hybrid; and post-conference activities such as collecting and submitting the conference proceedings papers to the publisher for publication and to be indexed in the major A&I databases, etc.; are also required.

There are also uncertainties in conducting a successful conference on a global scale. For example, according to the ICCA Annual Statistics Study 2020 (ICCA 2020)², international conferences have been significantly impacted by COVID-19, with fewer conferences and activities taking place in 2020, leading to a dramatic slowdown in the global conference market. Among these, 44% of the conferences were postponed, 14% were canceled, 30% were held virtually online, and only 9% were unaffected. Thankfully, Asia is relatively less affected and still shows greater potential, one reason for that may be attributed to China's success in epidemic control in the region. Although international participants have to join online, their peers or representatives from China can attend some of the international conferences normally.

At present, with China's heavy and continuous growing R&D investment in research and innovation³, China's research output, including research papers and academic conferences, is also increasing rapidly and ranking at the forefront of the world⁴. However, as mentioned above, for an international academic conference to be held successfully, it usually needs to be planned and prepared well in advance, which also takes a lot of time and effort of the researchers to organize the conference in addition to their heavy research tasks. Therefore, it becomes an urgent requirement to fulfill the conference organizations by adopting comprehensive conference professionals with new technologies such as IT and AI to support such academic exchanges and publishing, including the English language support for ESLs, etc.

AiScholar has thus created an internet-based one-stop software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for supporting academic research and exchange by integrating digital technologies of artificial intelligence and big data with the internet⁵. It provides an ideal one-stop SaaS solution for holding academic conferences. Since established in 2014, it has supported over 3,000 international academic conferences, with an accumulated number of participants of more than 1.8 million, covering subject areas of science, engineering and technology, life science and medicine, social sciences, and other disciplines. It has integrated over 33,000 global experts and scholars, served more than 2,000 universities and research institutions, and deeply collaborated with over 2,000 international STM journals and publishers. By covering all aspects of the conference planning and organization process, AiScholar simplifies the task for researchers and institutions. It includes using AI-assisted directional conference marketing to quickly reach target researchers as potential participants, AI intelligent conference management capable of reducing 90% of time consumption, professional virtual meeting setup plus streamlined onsite/hybrid facilities and management, comprehensive and multi-dimensional post-event statistics reports with insights. All the processes are data secured and reliable by data encryption transmission, providing a professional platform for researchers and scholars to conduct international conferences and share their cutting-edge results.

AiScholar also provides strong platform support to researchers in their publication process to international journals, in addition to supporting academic conferences, with its highly integrated global experts resources covering around 1,300 subject and interdisciplinary areas, which are particularly useful for Chinese ESLs who find English difficult. Their publishing journey would have otherwise been restricted by their limited understanding of the STM publishing norm such as how to best write and present their papers to meet a journal’s requirement, how to match a target journal, etc., and a considerable number of de-facto good quality academic papers failed to get successfully published in international academic journals simply due to those reasons. AiScholar has been playing an effective key role in supporting the researchers to achieve successful publication of their good quality academic papers with observing high ethical standards.

AiScholar has integrated eight interrelated system modules including the above-mentioned one-stop academic conference solution system, the global think-tank platform, the big-data intelligent journal matching system, the AI peer-reviewer matching system, the AiScholar cloud classroom teaching platform, the top-level talent service system, the academic headlines media, and the research achievement transformation and technology transaction system, and can thus provide comprehensive services to the related block areas of academic communications and transformations.

CONCLUSION

Nowadays academic research and communications need more and more support than ever before. AiScholar, with its one-stop academic service platform rooted in the integrated digital technologies of artificial intelligence and big data with the internet, has been providing strong such support with great achievement. Looking forward, AiScholar will continue to practice its innovative ideal and commitment to providing researchers and research communities with up-to-date professional solutions and services in academic research and exchanges with greater success.

REFERENCES

1. Papadopoulou E., 2008. How to organize a conference -Step-by-Step Guidelines? The University of Essex.
2. International Congress and Convention Association, 2021. ICCA Annual Statistics Study 2020 - Analyzing an Exceptional and Transformational Year.
3. Zhang Jie, 2021. China's Investment in R&D up 10.2% in 2020. The state council of china. China Daily.
4. Research Unit for Science and Technology Analysis and Indicators National Institute of Science and Technology Policy, MEXT, 2022. Digest of Japanese Science and Technology Indicators 2022.
5. AiScholar.