Publication characteristics of studies published in The Spine Journal from 2005 to 2015

Publication rates of abstracts presented across 6 major spine specialty conferences

Background

Although scientific researchers aim to present their projects at academic conferences as a step toward publication, not all projects mature to become a peer-reviewed manuscript. The publication rate of meetings can be utilized to assess the quality of presented research. Our objective was to evaluate the contemporary publication rate of abstracts presented at spine conferences.

Methods

We reviewed annual meeting programs of North American Spine Society (NASS), Scoliosis Research Society (SRS), International Meeting on Advanced Spine Techniques (IMAST), Spine Global Spine Congress (GSC), Lumbar Spine Research Society (LSRS), and Cervical Spine Research Society (CSRS) from 2017 to 2019. Abstracts were identified as published from PubMed and Google search. From published manuscripts, journal name and open access status was collected. Journal impact factors were collected from the 2021 Journal Citation Reports.

Results

A total of 3,091/5,722 (54%) abstracts were published, ranging from 44.5% to 66.3%. Publication rate of posters and podiums ranged from 39.8% to 64.8% and 51.6% to 67.2%, respectively. Podium presentations were more likely to be published than posters (59.6% vs. 47.2%, p<.001). Only NASS (61.4% vs. 61.8%) and LSRS (64.6% vs. 67.2%) demonstrated similar publication rates for posters and podiums. Award nominated abstracts had a significantly higher publication rate (68.0% vs. 53.4%, p<.001). Among journals with an impact factor, the median overall impact factor was 3.27 and was similar between all conferences except GSC, which was slightly lower (2.72 vs. 3.27, p<.001).

Conclusions

Fifty-four percent of abstracts were published with 3 societies (NASS, LSRS, and SRS) having rates of over 60%. Moreover, NASS and LSRS demonstrated high publication rates regardless of presentation type. These numbers are significantly higher than previous reports suggesting that these conferences allow attendees to review high quality evidence that is likely to achieve peer-reviewed publication while obtaining an early look at original research.

Internationalisation of general practice journals: a bibliometric analysis of the Science Citation Index database

Research plays a crucial role in the development of primary health care. Researchers in other specialities have studied the internationalisation of their journals, but no such study has been conducted for general practice. The aim of this study was to analyse the volume of publication and internationalisation of general practice journals indexed in the Science Citation Index (SCI) database in 2019. Of the total 1573 articles and reviews in 19 journals indexed under the subject category of 'primary health care' in the SCI database, 86.4% (n = 1359) were published in four English-speaking countries (32.8% in seven US journals, 34.8% in five UK journals, 12.5% in two Australian journals and 6.4% in one Canadian journal) and 40.6% (n = 639) were authored or coauthored by authors from a country other than that in which the journal was published. There was a significant (P < 0.05) relationship between the country of publication and the degree of internationalisation of the journal. The degree of internationalisation of general practice journals varied from 94.2% for family practice to 2.0% for primary care. There are wide disparities in internationalisation among different countries and general practice journals. There is much room for improvement in the internationalisation of general practice journals in the SCI database.

A bibliometric analysis of the spine journals

BACKGROUND

Spine is a rapidly growing branch with fully-dedicated peer-reviewed journals. Journal impact factor (JIF), speed of publication, and readership are some critical factors affecting the author's choice for submission. This study aimed to find the bibliometric data of spine journals.

METHOD

Fourteen Spine journals in NCBI (National centre for Biotechnology information, USA) database, meeting the inclusion criterion were analyzed for original articles, collected via stratified sampling from each issue of the journal. The dates to submission (DS), acceptance (DA), and publication (DP), study design, corresponding author's details like-subject specialization and country of affiliation were recorded for each original article. Data on JIF, number of issues/years, open access availability (OA), article processing charges (APC) were also retrieved. Correlation and geographic plot were used to display the findings.

RESULTS

The median (interquartile range) time for submission to publication/total time (TT) in spine journals was 175 (120-313) days with a submission to acceptance time of 107 (66-168) days and acceptance to publication time of 54 (20-170). Fifty-seven percent of the journals had APC, and all had options for OA. A significant correlation was noted between all determinants of publication speed and the Scimago Journal rankings (SJR) (AT: r = 0.238, PT: r = 0.074, TT: r = 0.288, p < 0.001). Amongst the author affiliations, the USA (37.5%) and Japan (18.6%) had the maximum contributions. Furthermore, 57.4% of authors were orthopaedicians, and 14.4% were neurosurgeons. Retrospective and prospective cohort studies were the standard study designs (48% vs. 20.9%), while clinical trials accounted for 5.8%.

CONCLUSION

Spine journals had comparable publication speed with other biomedical journals; all spine journals had OA options. Observational study dominates the pattern in spine research. The contribution is mainly from orthopaedician, but the trend is changing towards collaborative research with neurosurgeons.