Publications Rates for Podium and Poster Presentations from the American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society

Abstract

Category: Other Introduction/Purpose: National orthopaedic meetings are used to disseminate current research. These abstracts are commonly intended to go on to full-text publication in peer-reviewed journals. Several studies have reviewed the abstract to full-text journal publications for orthopaedic society meetings and reported a 34% to 73% publication rate. This has not been studied for the foot and ankle literature. The purpose of this study is to determine the full-text journal publication rates of podium and poster presentations from the American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society (AOFAS) Annual meetings between 2008 and 2012. Methods: All abstracts submitted to and subsequently accepted for podium and poster presentations from the 2008 to 2012 AOFAS annual meetings were compiled from the AOFAS and the published meeting programs. In May 2016, PubMed searches were performed using individual key words in the abstract title with all authors’ names. The results were reviewed for matches to the meeting abstracts with regards to content similarities. Time to full-text publication was recorded. Full-text publication rates for podium and poster presentations were calculated per year. The top journals of publication for podium and poster abstracts were calculated. Continuous data was summarized using mean ± standard deviation and categorical data was summarized using counts and percents. Difference in publication rates between podium and poster presentations was determined by an odds ratio. Results: From 2008 to 2012, 1262 abstracts were submitted to the annual meeting. The overall abstract publication rate was 62.4%: 73.7% for podium abstracts and 55.8% for poster abstracts. Podium presentations were significantly more likely to be published compared to posters (p< 0.0001; odds ratio 2.17, 95% CI, 1.64-2.86). Mean time to publication was 1.53 and 1.37 years for podium and poster presentations, respectively (p=0.124). The three most common journals for published podium abstracts were Foot and Ankle International (FAI) (50.4%), Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS) (13.0%) and The American Journal of Sports Medicine (AJSM) (4.3%). For poster abstracts, the three most common journals were: FAI (36.9%), Journal of Foot and Ankle Surgery (9.4%) and Foot and Ankle Specialist (8.5%). Conclusion: Podium abstracts were over two times more likely to be published compared to poster abstracts. The overall full- text publication rate for the AOFAS was one of the higher reported rates compared to other national orthopaedic society meetings. The significance of the high full-text publication rate is unclear; it may reflect the quality of presented material or commitment to publication by the authors. The top journal for podium and poster abstracts was FAI, indicating the presentations’ specialty-focus.