If you present will you publish? An analysis of abstracts at the craniofacial society of great britain and ireland conferences 2000-2009.

ABSTRACT

Objective: To assess the number of publications in peer-reviewed journals that are generated from the verbal presentations at the annual conference of the Craniofacial Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Design: A list of the verbal presentations (2000 to 2009) was obtained from the Craniofacial Society of Great Britain and Ireland website. Using a web-based PubMed search engine, a search was made using title, key words, and main authors. Main Outcome Measure: The primary outcome measure was the presentation's publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Secondary measures included specialty of the first author, the journal in which the article was published and its impact factor, and topic of the article. Results: Of 318 verbal presentations, 67 (21.07%) went on to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. By topic, 50.7% were surgical and 12% concerned speech. The first author was in the plastic surgical specialty in 29.9% and in either speech-language therapy or orthodontics in 17.9% each of papers. In addition, 50.7% of papers were published in the The Craniofacial-Cleft Palate Journal. The overall 2-year impact factor was 0.941. Mean lead time to publication was 29.02 months (range, 2 to 110 months). Conclusions: The publication rate is low in comparison with the rate of 44.5% given for all specialties in a Cochrane review in 2007. This may be related to the specialist nature of the subject matter or to the type of research presented at the conference and the difficulty in carrying out high-quality research on cleft lip and palate due to limited numbers and a long lead time to outcomes.