Assessing publication rate of abstracts presented in spine conferences as a quality benchmark: the example of the Canadian Spine Society Annual Meetings.

Abstract

Publication rate can indirectly assess the quality of research presented in scientific meetings. Considering presentations at orthopedic surgery and neurosurgery meetings, 10.5-66% of abstracts are published in scientific journals. Publication rate of abstracts presented at CSS Meetings is unknown. The objective of this study was to evaluate the publication rate of abstracts presented at the Canadian Spine Society(CSS) Annual Meetings from 2005to2014.In October2018, a systematic PubMed search was performed using title and authors of all abstracts presented at CSS Meetings from 2005 to 2014. The following information was retrieved from the articles and abstracts: year, type of presentation, publication in PubMed, time from presentation to final publication, journal and its impact factor(IF).A total of 621 abstracts were presented at CSS meetings from 2005 to 2014. Publication rate in PubMed was 54.8%(N=340/621). Oral presentations were more likely to be published than poster presentations(63.8%vs44.0%; OR=1.45; CI95%=1.20-1.75; P<0.0001). The mean time from presentation to publication was 1.76 years(±1.93). The 340 identified articles were published in 87 different journals. Most common journals were Spine(N=75; 22.1%), The Spine Journal(N=40;11.8%), and Journal of Neurosurgery:Spine(N=28;8.2%). IF ranged from 0.18 to 47.66(mean=3.73±4.68). IF of articles presented orally were higher than those presented as poster(P=0.038).The CSS scientific meeting maintain along the years a steady high quality research presentations as manifested by its significant publication rate(54.8%) in medical journals with mean IF of 3.73. In comparison with other spine scientific meetings, publication rates of abstracts presented at CSS meeting is amongst the highest.