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Sunday, October 19, 2008
Columbus A-C (Hyatt Regency Penns Landing)
Methods: All abstracts presented at the 25th Annual Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) in October 2003 were reviewed and assessed for subsequent publication in peer-reviewed journals through December 31, 2007, using a Medline search, performed independently by two reviewers. For each abstract we recorded the presenting author’s affiliation, presentation mode (podium, poster), and country of origin. For published articles, we recorded the publication date, type of journal (medical versus non-medical) and journals' impact factors. We calculated the mean and median time from conference presentation to publication, using a Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. Differences in the mean time to publication for poster and podium presentations were estimated using the log-rank test.
Results: Of 239 presented abstracts, 64 (27%) were subsequently published in full-length, including 39% of podium and 20% of poster presentations (p=0.002). Mean and median times from presentation to publication were 20.5 (95%CI 17.6-23.3) and 19.0 (95%CI 16.4-21.6) months, respectively (range: 0-47 months). There was no significant difference in mean publication lag for podium presentations (18.4 months), as compared with poster presentations (22.9 months), (p=0.089). The average journals' impact factor was 3.6±5.5 and did not differ substantially between podium and poster presentations. We found no association between the study origin and successful publication.
Conclusions: A significant proportion of studies presented at the SMDM meeting are not published in full-length within four years of the meeting, and are available only to those attending the meeting or to those that have access to conference proceedings. This failure to publish is substantially higher as compared with findings from other medical and biomedical meetings, where the publication rate was found to be 44.5%. A further study is needed to explore the reasons for this low publication rate and to compare the fate of SMDM meeting abstracts to those of similar conferences.
Results: Of 239 presented abstracts, 64 (27%) were subsequently published in full-length, including 39% of podium and 20% of poster presentations (p=0.002). Mean and median times from presentation to publication were 20.5 (95%CI 17.6-23.3) and 19.0 (95%CI 16.4-21.6) months, respectively (range: 0-47 months). There was no significant difference in mean publication lag for podium presentations (18.4 months), as compared with poster presentations (22.9 months), (p=0.089). The average journals' impact factor was 3.6±5.5 and did not differ substantially between podium and poster presentations. We found no association between the study origin and successful publication.
Conclusions: A significant proportion of studies presented at the SMDM meeting are not published in full-length within four years of the meeting, and are available only to those attending the meeting or to those that have access to conference proceedings. This failure to publish is substantially higher as compared with findings from other medical and biomedical meetings, where the publication rate was found to be 44.5%. A further study is needed to explore the reasons for this low publication rate and to compare the fate of SMDM meeting abstracts to those of similar conferences.
See more of: Poster Session I
See more of: 30th Annual Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making (October 19-22, 2008)