Publish or be damned? The fate of abstracts presented at the International Continence Society Meeting 2003

Aims: This study examined the presented abstracts from the International Continence Society (ICS) Meeting, 2003. It analyzed the rate and timing of full publication, the factors predicting successful publication, the consistency of reporting between presented abstracts and published abstracts, and the barriers to publication. Materials and Methods: The abstracts presented at ICS 2003, were categorized according to topic, nationality, and a range of methodological factors. Using keywords and author names, PubMed was searched for published papers corresponding to the work presented. For abstracts that had been published, the original abstract was compared with the abstract accompanying the full-text paper. For abstracts that could not be identified in PubMed, the main authors were surveyed with an email questionnaire, asking about reasons for non-publication. Results: Of 130 presented abstracts, 77 (61.6%) had been published in full by February 2006. Authors from the US were significantly more likely to have had their work published. Uniquely among topics, "Clinical Pharmacology" abstracts were significantly more likely to have been published. Fourteen (18.2%) abstracts were classified as having major inconsistencies between the presented abstract and the abstract accompanying the full-text paper. Inconsistencies between presented and published abstracts were significantly associated with delay in publication on Kaplan-Meier analysis. Most unpublished abstracts had never been submitted for publication. Conclusions: The high publication rate reflects well on the scientific quality of the ICS meeting. All authors should be encouraged to publish their work after presentation. Caution is advised when referencing or generalizing from abstracts that have not been published in full.