SUS/AAS abstracts: what is the scientific impact?

Area of Science:

• Surgical Education
• Academic Surgery
• Research Impact Assessment

Background:

• Evaluating the scientific impact of presentations is crucial for academic development.
• The Society of University Surgeons (SUS) and Association for Academic Surgery (AAS) are key forums for surgical research dissemination.
• Understanding publication rates, citation impact, and journal impact factors provides insights into research quality.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess and compare the scientific impact of abstracts presented at SUS and AAS annual meetings.
• To determine if presentation formats (plenary, parallel, poster) influence research impact.
• To correlate research impact metrics with the characteristics of the presenting societies.

Main Methods:

• A comprehensive review of all abstracts presented at the 2002-2004 SUS and AAS annual conferences.
• Analysis of publication rate (PR), publication citation (PC), and journal impact factor (IF) for each abstract.
• Statistical analysis, including one-way ANOVA, to compare metrics across session types and between societies.

Main Results:

• A total of 1200 abstracts were reviewed (SUS: 543, AAS: 657).
• Significant differences in PR were observed across session types for both SUS and AAS (p < 0.0001).
• SUS publications demonstrated significantly higher overall PR, PC, and IF compared to AAS publications (p < 0.0001).

Conclusions:

• Abstracts from both SUS and AAS represent high-quality research.
• Plenary sessions at both meetings showed trends towards higher PR, PC, and IF, suggesting effective research stratification.
• Higher impact measures for SUS presentations align with the generally more advanced research careers of its members.