Factors Impacting the Conversion of Abstracts Presented at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress Meetings to Full Publications

Objective: We sought to determine the rate of conversion of scientific abstracts presented at the Canadian Cardiovascular Conference (CCC), between 2006 and 2008, into peer reviewed manuscript publications within two years of their initial presentation. Moreover, we sought to identify factors associated with transition of abstracts to full publications.BackgroundThe rate of conversion of abstracts presented at scientific meetings into peer reviewed published manuscripts, has been a topic of interest for various medical specialties.

Rapid translation of abstracts into manuscripts allows for reliable and rapid communication of scientific knowledge into practice. Methods;Using a previously validated automated computer algorithm, we searched the ISI Web of Science to identify peer-reviewed full manuscript publications of abstracts presented at the CCC.

We manually entered information about abstracts presented in the CCC between 2006 and 2010, including data on the type of presentation (oral vs poster), category (basic science vs clinical cardiology) and the number of authors. Publication rates, mean time to publication, the mean number of citations and mean journal impact factor were determined.

Results:From 2006 to 2010, 3665 abstracts were presented at the CCC. Overall 24% of presented abstracts were published within 2 years of the conference. Mean impact factor for publications was 5.2 (range 0.4-53.2). Mean citations for published manuscripts was 14.4 (range 0-483). Of the abstracts that were eventually published, 4% publications were in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology.

Mean duration from abstract presentation at CCC to full manuscript publication was 13 months.Conclusion:Publication rates of presented abstracts at the CCC (24%) is lower than that reported for abstracts presented at American College of Cardiology (ACC) (29.5%), American Heart Association (AHA) (34.5%) and European Society of Cardiology (ESC) (27%).

This highlights the need to identify factors associated with improved abtract publication - this is an area of ongoing research for our group. Copyright © 2013 Published by Elsevier Inc.