Contemporary Dissemination Rates Among Research Presented at Obstetrics and Gynecology Subspecialty Conferences

We aimed to evaluate the conversion rate of conference abstract presentation to full manuscript among obstetrics and gynecology subspecialty society meetings.

We conducted a retrospective cohort study of 2019 meeting supplements from four subspecialty societies: 1) the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), 2) the American Urogynecologic Society (AUGS), 3) the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO), and 4) the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM). All abstracts that were not subsequently withdrawn were included and queried on PubMed using a multimodal method that incorporated abstract keywords and the names of the first and last author to determine publication status. An abstract was classified as a published manuscript if the first author of the meeting abstract was credited in the final publication. The primary outcome was overall publication status. Secondary outcomes included subdivided oral and poster abstract publication conversion, publication journal type, manuscript journal impact factor, time to publication, and additional presentation metrics.

Among the 3,425 total conference abstracts presented in 2019, the overall oral and poster abstract publication rate for all societies combined was 39.7% (subspecialty range, 33.1-47.5%). For only oral abstracts, 61.0% (subspecialty range, 50.7-78.6%) were published and, for only poster abstracts, 35.4% (subspecialty range 27.1-45.4%) were published. When comparing among subspecialty societies, there were significant differences in rates of oral abstract conversion, with ASRM at 50.7%, AUGS at 64.9%, SGO at 78.6%, and SMFM at 74.5% (P<.01), and in rates of poster abstract conversion, with ASRM at 27.1%, AUGS at 27.3%, SGO at 45.4%, and SMFM at 40.5% (P<.01). Most of the dissemination occurred in general obstetrics and gynecology journals and not in the society associated journals. The median (interquartile range) journal impact factor was 4.7 (2.1, 7.2) among oral abstracts and 3.3 (2.1, 4.8) among poster abstracts (P<.01). The median (interquartile range) time to publication was 16 months (9, 26 months) among oral abstracts and 17 months (9, 30 months) among poster abstracts (P=.13).

Our contemporary evaluation of women's health research dissemination shows that a significant portion of research presented at obstetrics and gynecology subspecialty conferences remains unpublished, even after 5 years.