What each search filter does

Open calls for papers, open registration, all. A listing-state filter, not a question about you. Open calls keeps conferences whose submission date is still ahead. Open registration keeps conferences you can still register for. All is the default, it resets every session, and it is never stored.

Field. The taxonomy has fourteen broad categories and just under two hundred fields beneath them. Selecting a category selects everything under it, so picking Health and Medicine is a way of saying "any of these" rather than a separate bucket.

Country and region. Region is a continental grouping and expands into its countries when the search runs. The country list here offers only countries that have listings, which is why it is shorter than the list an organizer sees when adding a conference — that one is all 249 ISO countries, always, because where you can hold a conference is not limited by where we already have one.

Format. In person, online or hybrid, as the organizer described it.

Dates. A window on when the conference starts, either end of which can be left open.

Early-bird still open. Keeps conferences whose early-bird date has not passed.

Registration fee. Two different things share this control and the difference matters. A ceiling — under a given amount — keeps listings that have no fee recorded at all, because a listing that has not said what it costs has not said it costs more than your ceiling. Free to attend excludes them, because free is a claim, and a listing that never made the claim does not get counted as having made it.

Fees are never shown on a card, in search, on the map or in a landing grid. They are on the conference page. Filtering a set down by price is a reasonable thing to want; ranking a directory by it quietly promotes the cheapest listings, and in this field cheap and serious are not the same thing.

Every filter combination has its own address. Copy the URL and you have kept the search.