110 Percentage of Studies Presented at a Conference Prior to Publication in Emergency Medicine Journals

Abstract

Presenting a study as a conference poster or oral presentation can provide authors with targeted feedback and insights prior to publication. However, to the best of our knowledge there is no data demonstrating what percentage of manuscripts are actually presented at a major conference prior to being published. The primary outcome of our study was to determine the percentage of manuscripts that were presented at a major conference prior to publication. As secondary outcomes, we sought to determine the distribution of abstract presentations by publication year and conference type. Two investigators independently reviewed all publications from January 2009 to December 2018 in two major emergency medicine (EM) journals which specifically require authors to disclose any prior presentations (Annals of Emergency Medicine and Academic Emergency Medicine). Investigators included all original research manuscripts. Case reports/images, narrative reviews, summaries of other articles, letters to the editor, and consensus conference proceedings were excluded. Investigators dual extracted data on the number of authors, type of research, country of origin, number of abstract presentations, and specific conferences for the abstract presentations for each manuscript. Discrepancies were resolved by consensus with the addition of a third reviewer. Data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel and descriptive statistics were reported. 2409 manuscripts met our inclusion criteria. 1109 (49.4%) manuscripts were presented at a conference prior to publication with a mean of 1.4 presentations per manuscript. There was a trend toward decreased conference presentation rates over time, with 57.0% of manuscripts presented in 2009 versus 38.8% in 2018. Of the total conference presentations, 89.6% were presented at a national or international conference, 8.3% were presented at a regional conference, and 2.0% were presented at a local conference. 61.7% were presented at an EM conference and 38.3% were presented at non-EM conferences. Among non-EM conferences, the most common specialties were pediatrics (33.2%), toxicology (5.6%), and cardiology (5.2%). Only half of all original research manuscripts were presented at a conference prior to publication, with the majority presented at national or international EM conferences. There was a progressive decline in the number of manuscripts presented over time. Future efforts should identify the underlying reasoning for not presenting at a conference and why this trend has been increasing over time.