{"doi":"10.1101/2022.12.12.22283344","title":"To snooze, schmooze, peruse, booze, or learn new views: a rejected Christmas Issue research study","abstract":"Abstract Objective To evaluate the frequency of snoozing, schmoozing, perusing, and boozing among attendees at an international conference. Design Survey and field study Setting The 9 th International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication in Chicago, Illinois (the conference). Participants 53 attendees (perhaps just enough to be scientific). Main outcome measures Self-reported conference behavior including frequency of falling asleep (snoozing), interacting with other attendees (schmoozing), and multi-tasking (perusing) during presentations, as well as drinking (boozing) at the conference. Results 53 attendees completed the survey, which represents a 100% response rate among the attendees who decided to complete the survey. Most of the respondents reported that they preferred in-person conferences before (47/53, 89%) and since (43/53, 81%) the COVID-19 pandemic. 49 (49/53, 92%) reported that multi-day, in-person conferences are still a good use of time. Although 49 (49/53, 92%) reported learning something new (new views), nearly half (24/49, 49%) stated that they could have learned this information from a book or journal article, as opposed to traveling to a conference. Two respondents (2/51, 4%) admitted to snoozing and 43 (84%) to perusing (e.g., emailing, working, and using Twitter) during presentations on the first day of the conference (we suspect that all 5 respondents who claimed that their sleep schedule was “none of our business” also snoozed regularly). The rate of boozing (up to 3 alcoholic beverages) on the first night of the conference was alarming (39/52, 75%), with an additional 10% unable to recall the total number of drinks consumed. Conclusions Formal, presentation-based conferences may no longer be needed, as attendees appear to be overly preoccupied with snoozing, schmoozing, perusing, and boozing. What is already known on this topic - Scientific conferences have functioned as both professional and social events, allowing attendees to learn about the newest research findings while they schmooze, and sometimes booze, with their colleagues. - Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the research community has grown increasingly accustomed to the benefits of attending conferences from behind their computers. - Little is known about the behaviors and preferences of attendees following the COVID-19 conference hiatus. What this study adds - Almost all respondents reported that multi-day, in-person conferences were still a good use of time and that they had learned something new (even though over half admitted that they could have learned this information from a book or journal article, as opposed to traveling to a conference) - Conference attendees rarely snoozed but frequently perused (email, work, and Twitter) during presentations; over three-quarters boozed on the first night of the conference. - Formal, presentation-based conferences may no longer be needed, as attendees appear to be overly preoccupied with snoozing, schmoozing, perusing, and boozing.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2022,"id":313851,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9628,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":270607,"name":"Joseph S. Ross","orcid":"0000-0002-9218-3320","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":20387,"name":"Joshua D. Wallach","orcid":"0000-0002-2816-6905","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":11,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:33:48.490749Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}