Quantifying publication rates and time to publication for urologic oncology podium presentations.

Abstract

357 Background: The American Urological Association (AUA) annual meetings serve as a large platform for unpublished research. Among the selected abstracts, podium presentations represent the most impactful submissions. Furthermore, between large meeting attendance and social media promotion, authors can disseminate their findings to a potentially large audience prior to final manuscript publication. While all AUA abstracts do undergo peer review, it is not with the same level of scrutiny that full-length manuscripts receive. Thus, we investigated the publication rates, impact factors, and time to publication of urologic oncology podium presentations at the AUA. Methods: Of 875 podium presentation abstracts from the 2017 AUA Annual meeting, 394 (45.0%) were classified as urologic oncology. We chose 2017 to allow for a three-year window for publication. Abstracts were assessed for subsequent publication between January 1, 2015 and May 31, 2020 with a pre-determined PubMed search protocol. Abstract authors were searched for individually, with key terms being added sequentially until <30 results were generated in PubMed. Each search result was then reviewed until a matching publication was found. Abstracts were deemed published if at least one author of the presented abstract was a manuscript author and/or at least one conclusion in the presented abstract was included in the conclusions of the publication. Publication rates, time to publication, and 2019 journal impact factors were collected. Results: Of 394 urologic oncology podium presentations at the 2017 AUA, 228 (57.9%) focused on prostate cancer, while 81 (20.6%) and 58 (14.7%) presentations focused on kidney and bladder cancer, respectively (table). Overall, 211 (53.6%) podium presentations were published. Median time from presentation to publication was 13.6 months (IQR: 7.5-21.5). There were 9 (2.3%) publications that were published prior to the submission deadline and 57 (14.5%) podium presentations that were published prior to the 2017 AUA meeting. The number of articles published at one, two and three years after the meeting was 90, 170 and 202, respectively. The median journal impact factor of all published works was 3.4 (IQR: 2.7-5.9). Conclusions: While AUA podium presentations disseminate valuable data, approximately half of these presentations were not published in peer-reviewed journals within three years. Therefore, care must be taken when promoting data or adopting new practices based on these presentations alone. [Table: see text]