OTA 1997 Posters - Scientific Basis for Fracture Care

Poster #1

OTA: Publication Rates of the Scientific Sessions

Paul Tornetta, III, MD, Steve V. Nguyen, Mario Brkaric

University Hospital, Brooklyn, New York, USA

Introduction: Society meetings have several purposes including the presentation of peer review quality scientific data. One method of evaluating the quality of the scientific portion of the meeting is to review the publication rate from the scientific session.

Purpose: To evaluate the publication rate of the scientific session of the OTA meetings, to delineate the time to publication and the journals in which the publications appeared.

Materials and Methods: The abstract books for the 1990 - 1995 meetings inclusive were used as the data base for the scientific sessions. For each paper presented a literature search was done on Medline from 1985 - current (1/97) by crossing important textwords and subject headings with the senior author. If the paper was identified, the meeting abstract was compared with Medline abstract to be sure that the paper was the same. If no citation was found, then each of the authors' publications over the time frame were printed in an effort to identify the abstract and assuming that a title change may have occurred. The year of publication and journal were recorded.

Results: The number of papers that were published from each year of the meeting is listed in table #1. The time from the meeting to publication is reflected in the decreased publication percentage from the 1995 meeting. The journals in which the papers were eventually published were: Journal of Orthopedic Trauma (31%), JBJS (20%), Clinical Orthopedics (10%), Journal of Trauma (6.4%). Excluding the abstracts that were published before their presentation, the median time to publication was 2 years after presentation.

Table #1

Percent of Abstracts Published

 Meeting Year

  % Published
 1990  67 %
 1991  70 %
 1992  64 %
 1993  63 %
 1994  62 %
 1995  34 %

Discussion: The rate of publication in Medline-referenced journals was consistent from 1990 - 1994 at 62% - 70% (average 65%). The 1995 abstracts cannot be fully evaluated due to lag time for publication. The median time from presentation to publication was 2 years. The OTA annual meeting, therefore, presents a high percentage of quality work in a timely fashion. The most common journal in which the abstracts are published is The Journal of Orthopedic Trauma, which is the official journal of the society.

Conclusion: The scientific sessions of the Orthopaedic Trauma Association's annual meeting contains a high percentage of papers that will eventually be published in peer review journals. Surgeons who attend the meeting can expect to be exposed to valuable scientific information that would not otherwise be available for several years. The Journal of Orthopedic Trauma is the single best source of information presented at the OTA meeting.