THE PUBLICATION RATES OF PRESENTATIONS MADE AT BASK ANNUAL MEETINGS: AN INDEPTH OBSERVATIONAL STUDY

Purpose: Our aim of this study was to find out the abstract to publication ratio (APR) in peer-reviewed indexed journals of abstracts presented at BASK annual meetings. We also wanted to identify the publishing journals and to look at the amount of time taken for publication. Methods: We obtained permission from BASK executive committee and retrieved all presentations (podium & poster) over six year period (2000–2005). An extensive PubMed database search was performed to determine whether or not the abstract had been published as a full paper up to the beginning of Nov 2008. Results: A total of 294 abstracts identified, 114 of them were published as 101 full-text articles in 21 different journals. ‘The Knee’ Journal was the most popular destination with 47 publications (41.2%) followed by JBJS (British) with 28 publications (24.5%). The overall abstract to publication ratio (APR) at BASK annual meetings was 38.77%. The mean duration between presentations to publication was 3.96 yrs (range 0 to 7.2 yrs, median 3.4 yrs). Conclusion: On bench marking the APR ratio at BASK presentations, it is comparable with those of BOA (33.1%), other BOA affiliated societies (26–50%) and medical specialties (32–66%). Abstract to publication ratio (APR) is considered as a measure of the quality of scientific meetings and our results indicates the higher credentials of BASK meetings. It is very difficult to exactly determine the reason for abstracts failing to indexed publications; it is arguable that some of these projects did not meet the scientific scrutiny of the peer-review process required for full publication. We recommend authors to submit the full manuscript of paper after acceptance of their abstracts for the BASK meeting as done in AAOS meeting in order to encourage them to complete their manuscript before presentation.