Publication of Research Presented at STFM and NAPCRG Conferences

INTRODUCTION

Oral and poster presentations of original research are a key strategy in the dissemination of new knowledge in academic medicine. Unfortunately, these mechanisms have some significant limitations. First, the number of people who are exposed to the information presented at a professional meeting is relatively small, and they must rely on their memory when trying to implement the information or convey it to others. Furthermore, many professional meetings rely on a limited peer review of abstracts rather than complete manuscripts. Manuscripts published in peer-reviewed journals overcome these limitations by having (1) widespread dissemination, (2) a written document that can be used for years, and (3) more rigorous peer review. Consequently, to move our knowledge base forward, it is important that presentations of original research transition to peer-reviewed manuscripts submitted for publication.

That presentations at professional meetings do not transition to peer-reviewed manuscripts is a problem faced by many medical specialties,^1–5 though family medicine has had a variety of initiatives to increase research productivity over the past 25 years.^6–9 An analysis of original research presentations from the academic family medicine meetings of the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) (http://www.napcrg.org) and Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) (http://www.stfm.org) from approximately 25 years ago showed that less than one-half of all publications were published within 5 years of conference presentation.¹⁰ Publication productivity in family medicine has increased over the past decade, however.¹¹ The objective of this study was to evaluate the proportion of presentations at recent major primary care research conferences that have become published.

METHODS

RESULTS

Tables 1 through 4 report the proportion of presentations that were published as articles and the mean time to publication. Time to publication ranged from 20 months before presentation to 51 months after presentation, with 8.1% (n = 37) of studies published before their respective conferences.

Publications appeared in 192 different journals. Table 5 shows a breakdown of publication distribution, with the most common journals listed in Table 6.

DISCUSSION

The finding that two-thirds of research presentations at major academic family medicine meetings appear to not transition to peer-reviewed publications has several implications for the discipline. This rate of publication after presentation at a national meeting may represent major missed opportunities for broad dissemination of findings. Moreover, the publication rate may indirectly measure the quality of presentations at national meetings. Both these implications suggest room for improvement in developing and disseminating scholarship and should be a concern for the discipline.

The room for most improvement appears to be in work-in-progress presentations. These projects may never be completed and would therefore be unlikely to be published. Many work-in-progress presentations are presented by residents and fellows, who may have neither the time nor the resources to complete projects before graduation or who may not wish to complete the project after graduation.

Interest in these studies in the medical community does not appear to be a factor, because many of the studies published appeared in non–family medicine journals. In a previous study, Elder and Blake reported that 56% of articles were published in family medicine journals.¹⁰ This rate dropped to less than 37% in our current study. The publication rate outside the primary discipline journals is similar to other specialties.¹²

There may be some other factors, such as the various reasons attendees may present at a conference: justification for travel funds, improving curriculum vitae, or non–research-oriented professionals trying to meet a scholarly requirement for their position with no real intention to publish. Also, in comparison with the previous study in family medicine for this topic,¹⁰ the publication rate is almost exactly the same (47.3% vs 47.6% for oral presentations on completed projects).

STFM and NAPCRG have supported efforts to expand publication opportunities in recent years by supporting journals in the discipline, hosting publication workshops, and promoting research development through the Grant Generating Project and the Council of Academic Family Medicine Educational Research Alliance.¹³ Despite these efforts, however, barriers remain, including lack of protected faculty time, lack of mentorship, and lack of specific funding for family medicine research,^2,14

The lag time between presentation and publication has improved, with more studies now published within 2 years (78.9%) than in the previous study of in family medicine (62%) published presentations. This outcome could be due to the emergence of a dedicated cohort of family medicine authors who are more active and want to have their studies published. Also, in this era of abundant Internet access, most if not all journals use digital electronic submission for papers, electronic reviewing, and rapid publication of studies in dedicated e-journals or e-publishing ahead of print. With a mean time of about 15 months from presentation to publication, family medicine is comparable to other fields.^5,15,16