Article Text
Abstract
Background The World Congress of Sports Injury Prevention initiates in Oslo in 2005 as a unique and comprehensive sports medicine prevention conference.
Objective The number and quality of presented abstracts published in BJSM followed by a full paper in the subsequent years is unknown.
Hypothesis Randomised controlled trials (RCT) are more likely to be published as full paper versus observational studies following the conference presentation.
Design All 154 oral abstracts of the World Congress of Sports Injury Prevention 2005 Oslo and the potential subsequent full text were analysed.
Main outcome measures Frequency of publication, time to publication, impact factor, score of CONSORT criteria for RCTs and STROBE for observational studies, as well as minor and major inconsistencies.
Results Overall, 76 of the 154 (49%) presented abstracts were published in a peer-reviewed journal with an impact factor of 1.946±0.812. There was no significant difference between the impact factor for RCTs (2.122±1.015) versus observational studies (1.913±0.765, p=0.469). The full paper of RCTs abstracts was published after 17±13 months and after 12±14 months in observational studies (p=0.323) There was a trend towards more observational abstracts being published as a full paper rather than RCTs (71% vs 47%, p=0.078). All of the published abstracts had at least one minor inconsistency while 65% had at least major inconsistencies. Results changed in 90% versus 68% (p=0.158), data were added in 60% versus 30% (p=0.065), and deleted in 40% versus 30%, (p=0.534). An opposite result was published in 0% versus 5% (p=0.481).
Conclusion There was no significant difference in the likelihood between RCTs and observational studies being published as full papers after the World Congress of Sports Injury Prevention 2005, neither for impact factor and time to publication. Only about half of the presented abstracts get published in a peer-reviewed journal within 4 years after the conference presentation.