The publication rate of abstracts presented at the 2003 urological Brazilian meeting.
OBJECTIVE
To determine the publication rate of orally-presented abstracts from the 2003 Urological Brazilian Meeting, as well as the factors determining this publication rate.


METHODS
The publication rate of the 313 orally-presented abstracts at the 2003 Urological Brazilian Meeting was evaluated by scanning the Lilacs, Scielo and Medline databases. The time between presentation and publication, the state and country of the abstract, the research methodology (cross-sectional, case-control, retrospective case series, prospective case series or clinical trial), whether drugs were utilized and the topic of the study were all characterized.


RESULTS
Thirty-nine percent of the abstracts were published after a median time of 14 months (range: 1 to 51 months). There were high publication rates for cross-sectional abstracts (75%), drug utilization studies (51.3%), clinical trials (50%) and prospective case series' (48.1%). However, there was only a moderate statistical trend towards a higher publication rate in the prospective case series (p=0.07), while the retrospective case series' showed statistically lower publication rates than the other groups (33.7%, p=0.04). Abstracts on laparoscopic surgery had the highest publication rate (61.9%, p=0.03) compared to others topics. In 57% of the unpublished abstracts, there was no interest in or attempt to publish, and rejection was responsible for the lack of publication of only 4% of the abstracts.


CONCLUSIONS
The publication rate of the orally-presented abstracts from the 2003 Urological Brazilian Meeting was comparable to that of international congresses. The subsequent publication of presented abstracts and the selection of prospective studies with stronger evidence should be encouraged and may improve the scientific quality of the meeting.
Oliveira
Leonardo Resende Sousa
LR
Núcleo Interdisciplinar de Pesquisa em Urologia, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, MG, Brazil. leomedjf@gmail.com
Figueiredo
André Avarese
AA
Choi
Mauro
M
Ferrarez
Carlos Eduardo Prata Fernandes
CE
Bastos
Andre Netto
AN
Netto
Jose Murillo Bastos
JM
D000043:Abstracting and Indexing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015706:Bibliometrics; D001938:Brazil; D003226:Congresses as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011643:Publishing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014572:Urology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*