Publication of abstracts submitted to the Annual Meeting of the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America: Is there a difference between accepted versus rejected abstracts?

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine publication rates of all abstracts submitted for presentation at the annual conference of the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America (POSNA) comparing papers accepted for presentation with those that were not accepted and to determine the median times to publication and the mean impact factor of journals that published papers from the 2 groups. METHODS: The titles and authors of all abstracts submitted for presentation to the POSNA for the years 2003 to 2005 were identified. To determine publication status, we conducted a computerized Pubmed search using the first author's name. If multiple publications were identified, the Boolean search operator AND was used to combine author names with key words. The title of each located published article was compared with the title of the abstract. If differences were noted, the abstract content was compared with the final publication. The journals, impact factor was determined using the journal citation report. The median time from conference presentation to publication was determined using a Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. RESULTS: Of 1191 abstracts submitted to the annual meetings of POSNA from the years 2003 through 2005, 440 (37%) were accepted for presentation. Acceptance of submitted abstracts increased from 30% in 2003 to 40% in 2005. Of the 1191 abstracts 599 (50%) were subsequently published by August 2009. The mean publication rate for abstracts accepted for presentation was 58.9% (259 of 440) compared with 45% (339 of 751) for rejected abstracts. The median time to publication of accepted abstracts was not significantly different when compared with that of rejected abstracts. The mean journal impact factor for accepted articles was 2.2 compared with 1.5 for rejected abstracts. CONCLUSIONS: The publication rates of abstracts submitted to POSNA is high compared with those of other international orthopaedic associations. The mean publication rate for accepted abstracts and rejected abstracts has increased substantially from 45% and 38% in 1991 to 1994 to 58.9% and 45% in 2003 to 2005, respectively. The journal in which most of the abstracts are ultimately published is the Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics Mobility. SIGNIFICANCE: A significant proportion of abstracts not accepted for presentation at POSNA meetings are published in peer-reviewed journals. Nonacceptance of a study for presentation should not be a hindering factor for researchers in attempting to publish their study in peer-reviewed journals. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Not applicable.