Full text publication rates of studies presented at an Asian emergency medicine scientific meeting

Purpose: Study findings can reach a worldwide audience only after a paper is published in the peer-reviewed literature; this is regarded by many as the definitive contribution to global exchange of knowledge. The abstract to publication (A:P) rates for free papers presented at an emergency medicine meeting in Asia has not been investigated before. The purpose of this study was to determine the full publication rate of abstracts presented as oral presentations at the Third Asian Conference on Emergency Medicine (ACEM) in Hong Kong in 2004. Methods: A detailed literature search of the MEDLINE database was performed using first and last authors names and appropriate key words up to January 2008. Results: A total of 54 free paper abstracts were presented at this conference as oral presentations. Ten (18.5%) abstracts had subsequently been published as full articles by the end of January 2008. The full-text articles were published in eight different journals. Conclusions:The A:P ratio of abstracts for oral presentations at ACEM 2004 was 18.5%, lower than that of similar meetings in the US and Australasia. It is normal for less than half of the abstracts presented at meetings to be published as full papers in refereed journals, largely due to the inability to overcome the barriers that present at each stage towards publication. Lack of researcher time due to pressure of clinical work and English language skills may play an important role in Asia. (Hong Kong j.emerg.med. 2010;17:154-157)