Publication rate of abstracts presented at the 2010 Canadian Ophthalmological Society Annual Meeting Alfred Basilious, MD, Ana Maria Benavides Vargas, MD, Yvonne M. Buys, MD ABSTRACT ● Objective: To evaluate the publication rate of submitted abstracts accepted for presentation at the 2010 Canadian Ophthalmological Society (COS) Annual Meeting in peer-reviewed journals. Design: A retrospective analysis and literature search of abstracts presented at the 2010 COS Annual Meeting. Methods: Abstracts accepted as an oral presentation or poster from the 2010 COS Annual Meeting were tabulated by type of presentation (oral vs poster), subspecialty, study design, number of authors, and principal investigator’ s institution. A PubMed search was conducted for each abstract by key word, first author, and last author. The year of publication, journal, and impact factor were recorded for identified publications. Publication rate was calculated by type of presentation, subspecialty, study design, number of authors, and institution. Results: A total of 175 abstracts were presented at the 2010 COS Annual Meeting. There were 105 oral (60%) and 70 poster (40%) presentations. The overall publication rate was 45.7%; 49.5% for oral presentations and 40.0% for posters. Cornea (57.6%) and public health (54.5%) had the highest publication rates of all subspecialties. Randomized control trials (71.4%) and cohort studies (70.0%) had higher publication rates than other study designs. Overall, 28.8% of abstracts were published in the Canadian Journal of Ophthalmology. The average impact factor of all publications was 2.73. Conclusion: Of abstracts presented at the 2010 COS Annual Meeting, 45.7% were published within 5 years after the conference. This publication rate is within the upper end of previously reported meeting publication rates for medical societies. Annual research meetings represent an important oppor- tunity for physicians and investigators to share their study results. Publication in a peer-reviewed journal is the next step in both dissemination of results and perhaps provides a measure of research quality as unpublished work does not become a part of the accessible scientific literature. Publication rate can be seen as an important metric of the scientific quality of a conference. Publication rates have been reported for several society meetings, including the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (51.7%), 1 American Academy of Clinical Chemistry (38%), 2 the American Society of Clinical Oncology (39%), 3 the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society (32%), 4 and the Annual Congress of the European Society for Surgical Research (42%) 4 (Table 1). Abstract publication rate varies with study design, 3,5 type of presentation, 4,6 and subspecialty. 1 To our knowledge, the publication rate of submitted abstracts accepted at the Canadian Ophthalmological Society (COS) Annual Meeting has not previously been investigated. The aim of this study was to evaluate the publication rate of abstracts presented at the 2010 COS Annual Meeting in peer-reviewed journals. METHODS In the 2010 COS Annual Meeting, 175 abstracts were accepted as either oral or poster presentations. A full list of abstracts was obtained from the COS web site. 7 Each abstract included type of presentation (oral vs poster), subspecialty categorization, title, and authors. Data from this document were tabulated into Excel. For each abstract, the type of presentation, title, subspecialty, study design, first and last authors’ names, number of authors, and principal investigator’s institution were recorded. A PubMed search was conducted from 1 January 2008 to 1 May 2016 for each abstract with the following format: first author [Author] AND last author [Author] AND key word [Title/Abstract]. For example, for the abstract titled “A Comparison of Standard Automated Perimetry on the Heidelberg Edge Perimeter and the Humphrey Field Analyzer” by John G. Flanagan, Yuan-Hao Ho, and Deborah Goren, the following search was used: Flanagan [Author] AND Goren [Author] AND Standard Auto- mated Perimetry [Title/Abstract]. If no publication was found, a second search was conducted with a different key word and either author: (first author [Author] OR last author [Author]) AND key word [Title/Abstract]. If a resulting publication was found, it was reviewed to ensure that it had the same content as the abstract submitted to the COS. For published manuscripts, the year of pub- lication, journal, and impact factor were recorded. The most recently published impact factor for the journal was used. The total publication rate was calculated in addition to the publication rate by type of presentation, subspecialty, & 2016 Canadian Ophthalmological Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcjo.2016.11.033 ISSN 0008-4182/16 CAN J OPHTHALMOL —VOL. ], NO. ], ] 2016 1