Publication outcome for research presented at the Vascular Society of Great Britain and Ireland annual meetings

BACKGROUND The Vascular Society of Great Britain and Ireland (VSGBI) annual meeting is a major international vascular surgery conference. Studies suggest that the percentage of presentations that result in full-text publications are a measure of the quality of the meeting. We investigated the publication outcome of abstracts presented to the VSGBI in 2001 and 2002. MATERIALS AND METHODS We retrospectively identified abstracts from the conference programmes and conducted a detailed electronic Medline and PubMed search to determine publication. We collected data regarding the study design, subject matter, publishing journal, time to publication, institution of origin, impact factors and RAE levels. RESULTS There were 63 publications from 106 abstracts (59.4%), with a median impact factor of 3.507. Prospective observational studies accounted for 20.6% of publications, with abdominal aortic aneurysms being the commonest subject matter (34.9%). The median time to publication was 12 months, with the European Journal of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery publishing 33.3% of the articles. Leicester achieved the highest number of publications and the majority of work came from centres with Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) level scores of 4, university centres accounted for 74.6% of publications. CONCLUSIONS We conclude that when compared to equivalent meetings in other specialties and geographical regions, the annual meeting of the VSGBI is of the very highest quality.