Association Between Study Quality and Publication Rates of Medical Education Abstracts Presented at the Society of General Internal Medicine Annual Meeting

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Studies reveal that 44.5 % of abstracts presented at national meetings are subsequently published in indexed journals, with lower rates for abstracts of medical education scholarship. OBJECTIVE: We sought to determine whether the quality of medical education abstracts is associated with subsequent publication in indexed journals, and to compare the quality of medical education abstracts presented as scientific abstracts versus innovations in medical education (IME). DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. PARTICIPANTS: Medical education abstracts presented at the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) 2009 annual meeting. MAIN MEASURES: Publication rates were measured using database searches for full-text publications through December 2013. Quality was assessed using the validated Medical Education Research Study Quality Instrument (MERSQI). KEY RESULTS: Overall, 64 (44 %) medical education abstracts presented at the 2009 SGIM annual meeting were subsequently published in indexed medical journals. The MERSQI demonstrated good inter-rater reliability (intraclass correlation range, 0.77-1.00) for grading the quality of medical education abstracts. MERSQI scores were higher for published versus unpublished abstracts (9.59 vs. 8.81, p=0.03). Abstracts with a MERSQI score of 10 or greater were more likely to be published (OR 3.18, 95 % CI 1.47-6.89, p=0.003). ). MERSQI scores were higher for scientific versus IME abstracts (9.88 vs. 8.31, p<0.001). Publication rates were higher for scientific abstracts (42 [66 %] vs. 37 [46 %], p=0.02) and oral presentations (15 [23 %] vs. 6 [8 %], p=0.01). CONCLUSIONS: The publication rate of medical education abstracts presented at the 2009 SGIM annual meeting was similar to reported publication rates for biomedical research abstracts, but higher than publication rates reported for medical education abstracts. MERSQI scores were associated with higher abstract publication rates, suggesting that attention to measures of quality-such as sampling, instrument validity, and data analysis-may improve the likelihood that medical education abstracts will be published.

Which educational interventions improve healthcare professionals’ resilience?

“…This score gives a reliable and objective measure of research quality. (Cook, Levinson, & Garside, 2011;Sawatsky et al, 2015) …”

Fate of Abstracts Presented at the First International Congress of Nephrology and Urology, Tehran, Iran, 2015

“…On the other hand, presenting a scientific content at a congress makes it available to only a limited number of researchers and scientists; therefore, for making the scientific content available to more scientific audience, it should be published in a scientific journal. The publication of presented abstracts in a congress as full text articles could increase the credibility of the article and also enrich the scientific literature (1,2).…”

“…Considering that the selection process for publishing an article in journals is stringent due to the peer-review process, only a limited number of abstracts will be published in prestigious peer-reviewed international journals. Therefore, the publication rate of presented abstracts at a conference is defined as an index for determining the conference's scientific quality (2,3). The abstract publication rate in a variety of medical specialties demonstrated a broad range of 8.5 to 78% in literature review (4,5).…”

Publication outcomes for research presented at a Canadian surgical conference

“…Although these meetings serve to provide critical appraisal and often helpful critique of the presented work, they cannot achieve the same rigorous peer review that comes with publication in a peer-reviewed journal. 2,3 There is a well-documented gap between acceptance of an abstract at a scientific meeting and its subsequent publication in a peer-reviewed journal. [4][5][6] This failure to convert conference abstracts to peer-reviewed publications results in a publication bias that can in turn result in a duplication of effort and wasted resources.…”

“…7,8 A wealth of studies documenting the rates of publication following abstract submission exists, and such studies have often been used as a marker of conference quality both within a particular specialty and across specialties. 3,6,[8][9][10][11][12] The most recent systematic review 6 reports a weighted mean publication rate following a conference presentation of 44.5%; however, the publication rates for individual conferences can vary substantially (8%-81%). With respect to vascular surgery, the Vascular Society of Great Britain and Ireland Annual Meeting of 2001 and 2002 reported mean publication rates of 59.4%, whereas the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress has reported mean publication rates of 24.1%.…”