Chairs of academic events: The investments and academic impact

Every year, tens of thousands of academics engage in unfamiliar tasks related to catering, hotel booking, and transportation. They do so as chairs of the academic event. We do not know much about these chairmanships; neither how the researchers engage nor whether it is worthwhile from an academic point of view. Based on interviews with twenty-three researchers at six Danish universities and an analytical framework informed by the concept of credibility cycles, we analyze the academic chairmanship and how it impacts the knowledge production process of the chair. The article argues that the chairmanship is a multifaceted investment, which includes a range of non-academic tasks. The investment is a source for the following forms of credibility network, buzz, and recognition and the chairs gain access to a range of other potential exchanges. The study concludes that chairmanships of academic events are surprisingly similar across disciplines and that they are potential science policy instruments.