Spine Surgery Education
Publication rates of abstracts presented across 6 major spine specialty conferences

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xnsj.2023.100227Get rights and content
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Abstract

Background

Although scientific researchers aim to present their projects at academic conferences as a step toward publication, not all projects mature to become a peer-reviewed manuscript. The publication rate of meetings can be utilized to assess the quality of presented research. Our objective was to evaluate the contemporary publication rate of abstracts presented at spine conferences.

Methods

We reviewed annual meeting programs of North American Spine Society (NASS), Scoliosis Research Society (SRS), International Meeting on Advanced Spine Techniques (IMAST), Spine Global Spine Congress (GSC), Lumbar Spine Research Society (LSRS), and Cervical Spine Research Society (CSRS) from 2017 to 2019. Abstracts were identified as published from PubMed and Google search. From published manuscripts, journal name and open access status was collected. Journal impact factors were collected from the 2021 Journal Citation Reports.

Results

A total of 3,091/5,722 (54%) abstracts were published, ranging from 44.5% to 66.3%. Publication rate of posters and podiums ranged from 39.8% to 64.8% and 51.6% to 67.2%, respectively. Podium presentations were more likely to be published than posters (59.6% vs. 47.2%, p<.001). Only NASS (61.4% vs. 61.8%) and LSRS (64.6% vs. 67.2%) demonstrated similar publication rates for posters and podiums. Award nominated abstracts had a significantly higher publication rate (68.0% vs. 53.4%, p<.001). Among journals with an impact factor, the median overall impact factor was 3.27 and was similar between all conferences except GSC, which was slightly lower (2.72 vs. 3.27, p<.001).

Conclusions

Fifty-four percent of abstracts were published with 3 societies (NASS, LSRS, and SRS) having rates of over 60%. Moreover, NASS and LSRS demonstrated high publication rates regardless of presentation type. These numbers are significantly higher than previous reports suggesting that these conferences allow attendees to review high quality evidence that is likely to achieve peer-reviewed publication while obtaining an early look at original research.

Keywords

Spine
Conference
Annual meeting
Publication rate
Abstract
Poster presentation
Podium presentation

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Author disclosures: TZI: Nothing to disclose. YL: Nothing to disclose. MJL: Nothing to disclose. CR: Nothing to disclose. RC: Nothing to disclose. JK: Nothing to disclose. JAC: Nothing to disclose. ARV: Royalties: Stryker (F), Globus (D), Medtronic (F), Atlas (B), Alphatech Spine (B), Elsevier (A), Jaypee (A), Taylor Francis/Hodder and Stoughton (A), Thieme (B); Stock Ownership: Accelus (100,000 shares), Advanced Spinal Intellectual Properties (29% ownership), Atlas (25,000 shares), Avaz Surgical (277 shares), AVKN Patient Driven Care (50% ownership), Cytonics (25,000 shares), Deep Health (830 shares), Dimension Orthotics LLC (20.62% ownership), Electrocore (38,439 shares), Flagship Surgical (50,000 shares), FlowPharma (200,000 shares), Globus (123,398 shares), Harvard MedTech (20,000 shares), Innovative Surgical Design (35,484 shares), Jushi (Haywood) (135,980 shares), Nuvasive (30,000 shares), Orthobullets (30,000 shares), Parvizi Surgical Innovation (100,000 shares), Progressive Spinal Technologies (14.5% ownership), Replication Medica (15,000 shares), Sentryx (40,000 shares), Stout Medical (561 shares), ViewFi Health (5,000 shares); Consulting: Globus (B). CKK: Nothing to disclose. GDS: Nothing to disclose. ASH: Royalties: Zimmer Biomet (F), CTL Medical Corporation (C).

© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of North American Spine Society.