P190 Abstract to publication rate in UK respiratory medicine research

Abstract

Introduction Medical research outcomes are presented at national and international conferences to a relevant but limited audience. These forums stimulate discussion, shape research and guide changes to clinical practice. Full-text publication (FTP) disseminates research to a much wider audience. There has been limited research evaluating rates of FTP from meetings in Respiratory Medicine. Across other specialities, abstract to publication rate (APR) varies from 23%–43%. We sought to determine the APR of research presented at the British Thoracic Society (BTS) Winter meeting and the factors influencing FTP. Methods The BTS abstract archive was used to identify all abstracts accepted for presentation from 2008 to 2011. This period allowed a minimum of five years from presentation to FTP. Both spoken and poster sessions were included. Data extracted included title, year, study design, sample size, statistical significance, sub-speciality and author affiliations. PubMed, EMBASE and Google Scholar were searched for FTP of abstracts. Results 705 of 1611 abstracts identified achieved FTP (APR 43.8%), of which 94.6% were published within 5 years. Factors increasing the likelihood of publication included oral presentation versus poster (p Figure 1 highlights the number of abstracts published to full text by subspecialty. 651 of 705 (92.3%) abstracts achieving FTP were published in journals with an impact factor (IF). The mean IF for spoken abstracts (7.60±6.89) was higher than poster abstracts (5.60±4.35; p Conclusion 44% of abstracts accepted for presentation were published in peer-reviewed journals. This is higher than other specialties; however over 50% of abstracts presented do not get published. There is therefore the potential for clinicians to miss important data. Given the rigorous peer-review process for presentation at scientific meetings, researchers should be encouraged to submit all presented work for publication.