[Predictive value of congress abstracts for later publication: Analysis of the the congresses 2006-2010 of the German Cardiac Society].

AIMS: The present study investigates whether scientific abstracts, which were accepted for presentation at the annual meeting of the German Cardiac Society (DGK) will be published more frequently and with higher ranking than rejected abstracts. Additionally, we analyzed whether the current peer review process of the congress abstracts is able to identify research of high quality.

METHODS: All abstracts submitted for the DGK meetings between 2006 and 2010 were anonymized and graded by 5-9 reviewers. Based on these ratings, abstracts were accepted or rejected. A Medline search with name of the first author, key words and content of all abstracts was conducted to identify publications following the congress abstracts. In case of identification of a publication, the impact factor (IF) of the journal was assessed.

RESULTS: 5535 (66 %) of 8411 submitted abstracts were accepted for presentation (basic reseach: 2497; clinical study: 5914). A total of 23 % of all abstracts were published (IF 3.6). The average time to publication was 0.7 ± 1.2 years, while 35 % of all published studies achieved publication in the year of congress. The publication rate was 26 % for accepted abstracts (IF 3.8) and 17 % (2.4) for rejected abstracts. Basic research achieved higher publication rates than clinical studies (26 % vs. 21 %) and had a higher average impact factor (IF 5.1 vs. 3).

CONCLUSIONS: The present study shows that abstracts, which were accepted for presentation achieved a publication more frequently and in higher-ranked journals than rejected abstracts.