Peer-Reviewed Publication of Abstracts Presented at the 44th Indonesian Ophthalmologists Association Annual Scientific Meeting

More than half research findings that were presented as an abstract in ophthalmic scientific meetings were not published as full-text manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals within 2 years. More than 300 abstracts were presented annually at the Indonesian Ophthalmologists Association (IOA) annual scientific meeting. There are no data regarding publication rates from ophthalmic meetings in Indonesia yet. This study aimed to investigate the publication of scientific research presented at the 44th IOA Annual Scientific Meeting. Abstracts submitted in the IOA annual scientific meeting were identified and retrieved from the IOA meeting proceeding book. A thorough literature search was conducted using PubMed, Google Scholar, and Google search engine. Author names, keywords, and titles of the abstract were used to match the IOA abstracts with published papers. A total of 352 abstracts presented were reviewed and 17(4,38%) abstracts were found to match the published paper in a peer-reviewed journal. Three of them (17,65%) were published in PubMed-indexed journals. The median publication time is 7 months. Title changes were found in four papers (23,53%) and author changes were found in eight papers (47,06%). Glaucoma subspecialty (14,71%) and experimental design study (10,42%) have the highest rate of publication. Less than five percent of abstracts presented at the IOA annual scientific meeting culminated in publication in a peer-reviewed journal within one year after the submission. Author interest and motivation are possibly related to the lower publication rate. Short study period could also be subject of bias. Study with longer period of time and larger sample size may be required.