title: The academic value of rehabilitation medicine meetings.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Twice-yearly meetings of The British Society of Rehabilitation Medicine (BSRM) take place at which posters and free papers are generated, as abstracts, to present novel research findings, audits and case reports. The aim of this study was to evaluate the academic value of these meetings, by determining the subsequent rate of publication in peer-reviewed journals of abstracts presented. This was compared to the publication rate of other European medical specialist society meetings.
  
  
  METHODS
  The authors used MEDLINE, PubMed and Google Scholar search engines to look for publication of abstracts presented at BSRM meetings within peer-reviewed journals over a 7-year period (2000-2006). The abstracts were categorised into sub-groups (original study, audit, review, case report and service description) to determine which type was more likely to be published. The above databases were used also to extract studies on publication rate of other medical specialties in Europe.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In 7 years, a total of 251 abstracts (of which 152 are original studies) have been presented as free papers or posters in a total of 13 meetings. The publication rate for the described study categories were: total 34%, original study 52%, review 50%, case report 5%, audit 0% and service description 0%. Publication rates from other specialist meetings in Europe range from 10% to 70%.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The average publication rate for an abstract submitted to a BSRM meeting is 34% for any abstract and 52% for an original study suggesting that the meeting is generating abstracts of comparable academic interest to other specialist societies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Leeds, UK. M.Sivan@leeds.ac.uk
authors.forename: Manoj
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sivan
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Ganesh
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bavikatte
authors.forename: Lloyd
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bradley
mesh_terms: D000043:Abstracting and Indexing; D015706:Bibliometrics; D003226:Congresses as Topic; D006801:Humans; D008511:Medicine; D017712:Peer Review, Research; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D011643:Publishing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012046:Rehabilitation / Q000639:trends*; D012955:Societies, Medical; D006113:United Kingdom