Publication rate of paper and podium presentations from the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society Annual Meeting.

Purpose: The Cervical Spine Research Society Europe (CSRS-E) actively promotes scientific activities, the annual meeting being the most evident of them. The publication rate of oral and poster presentations at the annual meeting could be a measure for the success of the promotional activities. The publication rates of abstracts presented at the annual European meetings of the CSRS are unknown. The quality of the abstracts presented at a conference is reflected by the publication rate. A high publication rate is usually interpreted as representative of high scientific value of the conference.
Methods: Poster and podium presentations from the 2007 to 2012 annual meetings were identified. Pubmed was used to search for the abstract title and/or the combination of authors to verify whether the data were published in a peer-reviewed journal. Abstracts were considered published if the data presented at the meeting were identical to that in the publication. The journals in which the data were published were identified, as well as the origin of the research centre.
Results: From 2007 to 2012 826 abstracts were featured at the CSRS Europe annual meetings. There were 236 podium presentations and 590 poster presentations. 42 % of the podium presentations resulted in a publication, and 28 % of the poster presentations led to a publication. Overall, 32 % of accepted abstracts effectuated a publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Abstracts from European research groups had a publication rate of 29 % compared to 34 % for abstracts from non-European research groups. Spine, European Spine Journal, Journal of Spinal Disorders and Techniques and J Neurosurgery Spine were the most common publication journals for the abstracts. The mean impact factor of the journals in which was published was 2.2.
Conclusion: 42 % of the abstracts that were accepted for podium presentation at the CSRS Europe resulted in a publication in peer-reviewed MEDLINE indexed journals. Publication rates are at the high end of the publication rate spectrum of abstracts accepted for European scientific meetings.