Publication rate of abstracts presented at the British Association of Urological Surgeons Annual Meeting

Abstract

Introduction:

Acceptance of abstracts at the BAUS Annual Meeting is sought after by trainees and encouraged by trainers; however, it is the publication of this research in a peer-reviewed journal that validates the significance of the work. We aimed to compare current publication rates with those detailed in a previous study 10 years ago to examine for changes on the rate and time to peer-reviewed publications of abstracts presented. We also assessed whether there was a difference in the presentation and publication rates between UK deaneries.

Methods:

All abstracts accepted for presentation at the annual BAUS 2012 and 2013 meetings were identified from the published supplements in the BJU International journal. Listed abstracts were searched for in October 2015 using the Medline Plus (PubMed) database to assess for successful conversion to a peer-reviewed paper listed on the Medline database.

Results:

In total 281 abstracts were presented; of these, 265 (94.3%) were from the UK. A total of 24.2% of the abstracts presented over the two-year period resulted in a successful conversion to a peer-reviewed publication. Mean time to publication was 11.59 months and mean impact factor of the publishing journal was 3.854. There appeared to be no correlation between the number of abstracts presented per deanery and the subsequent successful conversion to peer-reviewed publication.

Conclusions:

There has been a decline over the past decade in the number of BAUS abstracts being successfully converted into peer-reviewed publications, from 42% to 24.2%. The quality of any scientific meeting can be quantified by the number of peer-reviewed publications arising from its abstracts. Possible reasons for this observed reduction include a lack of time to prepare manuscripts, the actual quality and relevance of work being presented and data that may be of questionable validity. In addition, indicative numbers set for publications to enable successful awarding of Certificate of Completion of Training are low.

Keywords

BAUS research abstracts publication rates fate of abstracts

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Rao

Beatty

Laniado

. Publication rate of abstracts presented at the British Association of Urological Surgeons Annual Meeting. BJU Int 2006; 97: 306–309.

Hersey

Fleshner

Publication rate of abstracts presented at the annual meeting of the American Urological Association. BJU Int 2004; 94: 79–81.

Special Issue: Abstracts of the British Association of Urological Surgeons 2013, Annual Scientific Meeting, Manchester Central, 17–20 June 2013. BJU Int 2013; 111 (Suppl S3): 1–79.

Special Issue: Abstracts of the British Association of Urological Surgeons 2012

Annual Scientific Meeting, Scottish Exhibition & Conference Centre, Glasgow, UK, 25–28 June 2012. BJU Int 2012; 109 (Suppl S7): 1–77.

Autorino

Quarto

Sio

. Fate of abstracts presented at the World Congress of Endourology: Are they followed by publication in peer-reviewed journals? J Endourol 2006; 20: 996–1001.

Dickersin

Min

Meinert

CL.

Factors influencing publication of research results. Follow-up of applications, submitted to two institutional review boards. JAMA 1992; 267: 374–378.

Oliver

Whitaker

Chohan

DP.

Publication rates for abstracts presented at the British Association of Plastic Surgeons meetings: How do we compare with other specialties?

Br J Plast Surg 2003; 56: 158–160.

Publication rate of abstracts presented at the British Association of Urological Surgeons Annual Meeting – 10 years on