Intentional and serendipitous diffusion of ideas: Evidence from academic conferences
Fuente:
arXiv
Salvato in:
| Autori principali: | , , , |
|---|---|
| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2022
|
| Soggetti: | |
| Accesso online: | |
| Tags: |
Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
|
| _version_ | 1866913199675146240 |
|---|---|
| author | Teplitskiy, Misha Park, Soya Thompson, Neil Karger, David |
| author_facet | Teplitskiy, Misha Park, Soya Thompson, Neil Karger, David |
| contents | This paper investigates the effects of seeing ideas presented in-person when they are easily accessible online. Presentations may increase the diffusion of ideas intentionally (when one attends the presentation of an idea of interest) and serendipitously (when one sees other ideas presented in the same session). We measure these effects in the context of 25 computer science conferences using data from the scheduling application Confer, which lets users browse papers, Like those of interest, and receive schedules of their presentations. We address endogeneity concerns in presentation attendance by exploiting scheduling conflicts: when a user Likes multiple papers that are presented at the same time, she cannot see them both, potentially affecting their diffusion. Estimates show that being able to see presentations increases citing of Liked papers within two years by 1.5 percentage points (62.5% boost over the baseline citation rate). Attention to Liked papers also spills over to non-Liked papers in the same session, increasing their citing by 0.5 percentage points (125% boost), and this serendipitous diffusion represents 30.5% of the total effect. Both diffusion types were concentrated among papers semantically close to an attendee's prior work, suggesting that there are inefficiencies in finding related research that conferences help overcome. Overall, even when ideas are easily accessible online, in-person presentations substantially increase diffusion, much of it serendipitous. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2209_01175 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Intentional and serendipitous diffusion of ideas: Evidence from academic conferences Teplitskiy, Misha Park, Soya Thompson, Neil Karger, David Digital Libraries General Economics Economics This paper investigates the effects of seeing ideas presented in-person when they are easily accessible online. Presentations may increase the diffusion of ideas intentionally (when one attends the presentation of an idea of interest) and serendipitously (when one sees other ideas presented in the same session). We measure these effects in the context of 25 computer science conferences using data from the scheduling application Confer, which lets users browse papers, Like those of interest, and receive schedules of their presentations. We address endogeneity concerns in presentation attendance by exploiting scheduling conflicts: when a user Likes multiple papers that are presented at the same time, she cannot see them both, potentially affecting their diffusion. Estimates show that being able to see presentations increases citing of Liked papers within two years by 1.5 percentage points (62.5% boost over the baseline citation rate). Attention to Liked papers also spills over to non-Liked papers in the same session, increasing their citing by 0.5 percentage points (125% boost), and this serendipitous diffusion represents 30.5% of the total effect. Both diffusion types were concentrated among papers semantically close to an attendee's prior work, suggesting that there are inefficiencies in finding related research that conferences help overcome. Overall, even when ideas are easily accessible online, in-person presentations substantially increase diffusion, much of it serendipitous. |
| title | Intentional and serendipitous diffusion of ideas: Evidence from academic conferences |
| topic | Digital Libraries General Economics Economics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.01175 |