Characteristics and Fate of Abstracts Presented at American Academy of Ophthalmology Meetings

ABSTRACT

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the characteristics and publication outcomes of abstracts presented in American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) meetings.

Subject and Methods: Abstracts from AAO meetings for the years 2012 and 2013 were evaluated from the meeting archives. The study characteristics were recorded for each abstract. Each abstract was assessed for publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal using three search engines (PubMed, Medline, and Google Scholar). Time to publication was also calculated.

Results: A total of 929 abstracts presented to 2 AAO meetings were analyzed. Among subspecialty areas, retina represented the largest percentage of accepted meeting abstracts (33.3%) followed by cornea (21.9%), cataract (14.9%), and glaucoma (14.4%). A total of 304 abstracts (32.7%) were published in peer-reviewed journals as full-length articles. The median time to publication was 40 months, and the median impact factor of the journal for the published manuscript was 1.9. In multivariable models, topics related to glaucoma were most likely to be published followed by retina. The odds for publication were higher if the first author was affiliated with a residency program, and if the first author originated from South Korea and the United States.

Conclusions: Our study presents the landscape of publication outcomes for abstracts presented in national AAO meetings with ~1/3 of presented abstracts culminated in publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

Keywords:

• Publication outcomes
• abstracts
• national meeting
• ophthalmology
• characteristics

Acknowledgment

This manuscript was edited by the Science Communication Group at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

Conflict of interest

There is no conflict of interest for any authors. This statement is to certify that all authors have seen and approved the manuscript being submitted. The article has not been previously published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Additional information

Funding

No authors received any honorarium, grant, or other form of payment to produce the manuscript.