Publication Patterns of Presentations at the 16th Quadrennial Meeting of the World Society for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery

Abstract

Background: The quality of a scientific meeting can be quantified by the rate of full publications arising from the presented abstracts and the impact factor of the journals in which the studies were published. Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the publication rates of presentations from the 2013 World Society for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery (WSSFN) quadrennial meeting. Methods: Scopus and PubMed databases were searched for the authors of the presentations to identify full publications arising from the relevant abstracts. Author and content matching were used to match an abstract with a full publication. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used for statistical analysis. Results: In total, 77% (57/74), 56% (44/79), and 50% (79/157) of the paper, flash, and poster presentations, respectively, have been published, with an overall publication rate of 58% (180/310). Articles received a total of 5,227 citations, with an average of 29 +/- 64.1 citations per article. The first authors who published their studies had a significantly higher h-index than those who did not publish (p = 0.003). The most preferred journals for publication were Journal of Neurosurgery, Acta Neurochirurgica, and Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery. The majority of the articles (117/180 [65%]) were published in a quartile 1 or 2 journal. The average journal impact factor (JIF) was 4.5 for all presentations, and 7.8 for paper session presentations. Studies presented in paper sessions were published in significantly higher-impact factor journals than those presented in poster sessions (p < 0.001). Conclusions: The WSSFN Congress had a relatively high overall publication rate (58%) compared to both other neurosurgical congresses and congresses in other scientific fields. The average JIF of 7.8 is a reflection of the high quality and high impact of the paper session presentations.