Publication rates of presentations at an annual meeting of the american academy of orthopaedic surgeons

Abstract

Background: The Program Committee of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgery (AAOS) continually tries to improve the quality of the scientific program at AAOS meetings. However, according to the most recent study, the publication rate of papers presented at the 1996 annual meeting was only 34%.

Questions/purposes: To quantify the effects of these measures, we determined the 5-year publication rates in peer-reviewed journals of papers presented at the 2001 AAOS annual meeting.

Methods: Using the same methods described by Bhandari et al., we performed a comprehensive search of Medline and PubMed for subsequent publications of podium and poster presentations.

Results: The publication rates for all presentations were 49% at 5 years with poster and podium presentations at 47% and 52%, respectively. Among subspecialty divisions, the highest rate of publication was the sports medicine and arthroscopy category with 58% and the lowest was in the rehabilitative medicine category with 21%.

Conclusions: Less than 50% of abstracts presented at the 2001 AAOS annual meeting were published in the peer-reviewed literature at 5 years. As many studies presented will not pass the scrutiny of peer review, the information presented at the AAOS annual meeting should not be used as the sole guide to clinic practice.

Fig. 1

The publication rates of poster and podium abstracts after presentation at the 2001 AAOS Annual Meeting are shown. The majority of the papers eventually published in peer reviewed literature (63%) were published within 2 years after presentation.

Fig. 2

The cumulative publication rates versus the yearly publication rates of podium and poster presentations are shown. The total number of published papers increased yearly after the 2001 AAOS Meeting. However, the number of published papers and the likelihood of publication decreased 3 years after initial presentation.