What fate befalls the congress proceedings? Conversion rates of National Thoracic Surgery Congress proceedings into international publications

Background: The aim of this study was to determine the journal publication rate of the papers presented at the National Thoracic Surgery Congress in the subsequent four years and to examine the variables related to these rates for the published papers in Turkey. Methods: The papers which were presented at the 6th National Thoracic Surgery Congress in 2011 and published in the international peer-reviewed journals and the Turkish Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, the official publication of the Turkish Society of Cardiovascular Surgery and the Turkish Society of Thoracic Surgery, were identified using the PubMed database. The type of the paper, title, name of the first author and affiliated institution, duration for publication, and journal name were retrospectively analyzed. Results: Of a total of 312 reports, 35 (11.2%) were reported to be published in the international journals. Five of 23 oral presentations (21.7%), 10 of 61 poster discussions (16.3%), and 20 of 228 poster presentations (8.7%) were were found to be converted into publications. Oral presentations were more frequently converted to publications than poster presentations; however, the difference was not statistically significant (p=0.163). For the affiliation type, the highest conversion rate of publications was from universities (64.4%); however, the affiliation type was not significant between universities, training and research hospitals, and multi-center studies (p=0.581). The time to conversion into a publication was significantly shorter in poster presentations, compared to oral presentations (p=0.005). Conclusion: Our study results show that publishing rate of the congress presentations in peer-reviewed journals is about 10% and the rate is higher in oral presentations and studies conducted at university clinics.