Publication outcomes for research presented at a Canadian surgical conference

The failure of investigators to publish research in peer-reviewed journals following acceptance at a national or international meeting can lead to significant publication biases in the literature. Our objective was to evaluate the abstract to manuscript conversion rate for abstracts presented at the Canadian Society for Vascular Surgery (CSVS) annual meeting and to evaluate the conversion rate for CSVS-awarded research grants.

We searched for authors of abstracts accepted at the CSVS Annual Meeting (2007-2013) and recipients of CSVS research awards (2005-2013) on Scopus and PubMed databases to identify related publications.

We identified 84 publications from 188 research abstracts (45%) and 17 publications from 39 research grants (44%). The mean time to publication was 1.8 years and the mean impact factor was 2.7. Studies related to endovascular therapies demonstrated a trend toward a higher rate of publication relative to open surgical therapies (64 [56%] v. 37 [27%]). Additionally, we observed a similar trend in research grant topics related to endovascular therapies relative to open surgical therapies (9 [67%] v. 8 [38%]). Finally, CSVS research grant recipients who subsequently published had a significantly higher h-index at the time of receipt than those who had not published.

The CSVS annual meeting's abstract to publication conversion rate is comparable to that of its Canadian peers as well as to other medical specialties; however, a substantial publication gap remains. We identified several potential areas that may help to improve the effectiveness of CSVS research grants.