From abstract to publication: Factors predictive of publication success in the field of breast and gynecological malignancy.

Abstract

e23007 Background: Cancer research has rapidly evolved over the last few decades which has led to an improvement in patient care and outcomes. Dissemination of this research presented at meetings is essential to inform clinical practice. However, there continues to be a delay in the publication of data even after successful presentation of research as abstracts. In our study, we aim to determine abstract characteristics associated with successful peer-reviewed publication after presentation at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting for Breast and Gynecological malignancies. Methods: All oral abstracts (OA) & poster abstracts (PA) presented in the Breast & Gynecologic cancers categories from 2017/2018 ASCO annual meetings were included in the retrospective study. Manuscript publication was confirmed by searching PubMed using a data cut-off of December 2022. Publication characteristics like number of authors, time to publication (in months (mo)), study size, nature of results, impact factor, gender, H-index, citation of first author (FA) & last author (LA), NIH funding of LA were collected. Univariate logistic regression modeling was used to measure the association between publication status and select predictors. Results: 40/50 (80%) OA & 246/527 (46.6%) PA were published in PubMed indexed journals. Mean time to publication for OA was 17.41 mo & for PA was 19.52 mo. Mean IF for published OA was 28 & PA was 9.98. Of presented abstracts, 30/50 (60%) OA & 313/527 (59.39%) PA had positive results. Of the ones published, 23/40 (57.5%) of OA (p=0.72) & 190/246 (77.2%) of PA (p<0.001) had positive findings. 250/527 (49.14%) PA & 17/50 (33.3%) of OA were presented by females. Of the published OA, 15/40 (37.5%) had female FA & 10/40 (25%) female LA. For published PA, FA females were 118/246 (47.9%) while LA females were 86/246 (34.9%). For published PA, median H-index for FA was 33 & LA was 68. 16/40 (40%) LA of published OA & 62/246 (25%) of published PA had NIH funding. Conclusions: Our study reveals that poster abstracts with positive findings are more likely to be published, implying publication bias in research. In addition, there is also higher likelihood of publication if last author is NIH funded. Our study highlights the need to address these factors to maximize the chances of publication of impactful research. [Table: see text]