Introduction

1. No. 108 Conversion Rates of Abstracts Presented at the USANZ Annual Scientific Meeting into Full Text Journal Article; Determinants of Publications Peter D Yoon, VenuChalasani, Henry H Woo Sydney Adventist Hospital Clinical School, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia Introduction The transition of a presented abstract in a scientific meeting to a journal article improves the quality of the abstract and prevents an abstract being incorporated into meta-analyses or practice guidelines without proper appraisal. Recently, there have been raised concerns about low publication rates amongst presented studies within USANZ ASM. Results Out of 614 abstracts that were presented at USANZ ASM between 2005 and 2009, 183 papers were published giving a publication rate of 29.80%. Publication rate of USANZ ASM was comparatively lower than other international urology scientific meetings hosted by organisations (Figure 1)(1-7). The papers were predominantly published in urological journals and were more likely to be published if they were presented by an international author; retrospective studies; and basic science research. The mean time to publication was 14.5 months (SD=13.89) and the mean Impact Factor of journals where papers were published was 2.90. Aim Our study aims to analyse the current status of USANZ ASM’s publishing rate and subsequently identify different characteristics of the study that would most likely lead to journal publications. We will also compare USANZ ASM abstracts’ publications with counterparts of other urological associations internationally. • Methods • All abstracts presented at the USANZ ASM from 2005 to 2009 were reviewed. • A Pubmed search was performed, between 15thof June and 15th of July 2011, using a search algorithm to identify the full text publications of the presented abstracts. • Correlation between abstract characteristics and publication rate was then examined to distinguish the predictors for publications. References 1. Hoag CC, Elterman DS, Macneily AE. Abstracts presented at the American Urological Association Annual Meeting: determinants of subsequent peer reviewed publication. J Urol 2006; 176: 2624–9 2. Cartwright R, Khoo AK, Cardozo L. Publish or be damned? The fate of abstracts presented at the International Continence Society Meeting 2003. Neurourol Urodyn 2007; 26: 154–7 3. Ng L, Hersey K, Fleshner N. Publicationrate of abstracts presented at the annual meeting of the American Urological Association. BJU Int 2004; 94: 79–81 4. Smith WA, Cancel QV, Tseng TY, Sultan S, Vieweg J, Dahm P. Factorsassociated with the full publication of studies presented in abstract form at the annual meeting of the American Urological Association. J Urol 2007; 177: 1084–9 5. Rao AR, Beatty JD, Laniado M, Motiwala HG, Karim OM. Publicationrate of abstracts presented at the British Association of Urological Surgeons Annual Meeting. BJU Int 2006; 97: 306–9 6. Autorino R, Quarto G, Di Lorenzo G, De Sio M, Damiano R. Are abstracts presented at the EAU meeting followed by publication in peer-reviewed journals? A criticalanalysis. EurUrol2007; 51: 833–40 7. Oliveira LR, Figueiredo AA, Choi M, Ferrarez CE, Bastos AN, Netto JM. The publication rate of abstracts presented at the 2003 urological Brazilian meeting. Clinics (Sao Paulo) 2009; 64: 345–9 Conclusions Approximately 30% of the abstracts presented at the USANZ ASM between 2005 and 2009 were ultimately converted to a full text journal article, usually within 3 years after the presentations. The conversion rates differed according to the study types and their origin. The overall publication rate was relatively low compared to other urological meetings held in America and Europe (31.6~61.6%) (1-7). USANZ has a challenge of encouraging researchers to convert their accepted abstracts into full publications. Poster presentation sponsor