Publication Rates of Abstracts Presented at Five National Pharmacy Association Meetings

Abstract

Background: Abstract presentations at professional meetings provide a medium for disseminating the findings of scholarly activity. Rates of abstract publication from various biomedical disciplines have been evaluated, with pharmacy noted to be lower than other specialties. Previous research on pharmacy abstract publication rates was conducted for a limited number of professional meetings but has not been assessed using Google Scholar. Objective: To determine the full publication rate of abstracts presented at the 2005 American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) Spring and Annual Meetings, American Pharmacists Association (APhA) Annual Meeting, and American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) Summer and Midyear Clinical Meetings. Methods: Publication status was assessed for abstracts presented during the 2005 ACCP Spring and Annual Meetings, APhA Annual Meeting, and ASHP Summer and Midyear Clinical Meetings using PubMed and Google Scholar. Data collected included abstract category, study category, practice site, database(s) in which publication appeared, time in months to publication, publication type, and journal of publication. Results: Evaluation of 2,000 abstracts presented in 2005 revealed an overall full publication rate of 19.8% (n 5 384). Nearly all pharmacy abstracts were published as manuscripts (98.4%; n5378) and indexed in PubMed and Google Scholar (91.9%; n 5 353), although a significant percentage were indexed in Google Scholar only (7.8%; n 5 30). The mean time to full publication was 16.8 months (SD 611.9 months). Conclusions: Results were consistent with previously reported full publication rates of abstracts from pharmacy association meetings, indicating that abstracts presented at pharmacy meetings continue to have a lower full publication rate than other health disciplines.Key Words-abstracts, journals, meetings, pharmacy, publications Hosp Pharm-2013;48(3):219-226 A bstract presentations at professional meetings provide a valuable medium for disseminating the findings of scholarly activity, with representation from a broad spectrum of topic categories and practice settings. Abstract data are typically published by the respective organization and may also appear in secondary databases such as International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, Ovid, PubMed, and Google Scholar; however, the data contained within many abstracts may never be published in complete manuscript format.Rates of abstract publication from various disciplines have been previously evaluated. subsequent to abstract presentation at pharmacy association meetings have been significantly lower than other health disciplines. 4-7Previous research on pharmacy abstract publication rates has been conducted for a limited number of professional meetings, but pharmacy abstract publication status has not been assessed using Google Scholar. Google Scholar provides search results encompassing peer-reviewed publications, theses, books, abstracts, and articles from a variety of organizations and thus can potentially retrieve a gr...

Predictors of Publication Rates for Abstracts Presented at the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy Annual Meetings

“…15,16 The publication rate at the AACP Annual Meeting was found to be similar to other pharmacy conferences. [1][2][3][4] (Table 4) The AACP publication rate was higher than ASHP, but it was lower than ACCP.…”

“…The abstract publication rates for pharmacy conferences have been examined previously. [1][2][3][4] The publication rates have ranged from 10% to 33% at the American Society of HealthSystem Pharmacists (ASHP) Midyear clinical meeting and American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) Annual meeting, respectively. 1 These rates are lower than the average publication rate for biomedical sciences reported in a 2007 systematic review.…”

“…[1][2][3][4] The publication rates have ranged from 10% to 33% at the American Society of HealthSystem Pharmacists (ASHP) Midyear clinical meeting and American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) Annual meeting, respectively. 1 These rates are lower than the average publication rate for biomedical sciences reported in a 2007 systematic review. 5 Furthermore for ASHP and ACCP meetings, the publication rate has not changed over time as a similar publication rate was seen in the 1994 meetings compared to the 2005 meetings.…”

Residency projects belong in journals not filing cabinets

“…The percentage of abstracts presented at professional conferences that are subsequently published as full reports is also low. From 1978 to 2012, the full‐publication rate of abstracts presented at pharmacy meetings was the lowest among all health care disciplines 12 …”

Engaging in Collaborative Research: Focus on the Pharmacy Practitioner

“…Out of 2,000 abstracts presented in 2005 at the ACCP Spring and Annual Meetings, APhA Annual Meeting, and ASHP Summer and Midyear Clinical Meetings, only 384 (19.8%) were published and 98.4% of the published manuscripts were indexed in PubMed on average 16.8 months after presentation. 43 If a submission is initially rejected, the research group should examine the peer-reviewers' comments and use them to modify and enhance their manuscript for submission to another journal. If modifications are requested, a collaborative research group may divide the responsibilities so that editing is not left to one investigator.…”