Department of Palliative and Supportive Services, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
J Palliat Med. 2010 Jun;13(6):669-75. doi: 10.1089/jpm.2009.0273.
Accessing new knowledge as the evidence base for hospice and palliative care grows has specific challenges for the discipline. This study aimed to describe conversion rates of palliative and hospice care conference abstracts to journal articles and to highlight that some palliative care literature may not be retrievable because it is not indexed on bibliographic databases.
Substudy A tracked the journal publication of conference abstracts selected for inclusion in a gray literature database on www.caresearch.com.au . Abstracts were included in the gray literature database following handsearching of proceedings of over 100 Australian conferences likely to have some hospice or palliative care content that were held between 1980 and 1999. Substudy B looked at indexing from first publication until 2001 of three international hospice and palliative care journals in four widely available bibliographic databases through systematic tracing of all original papers in the journals.
Substudy A showed that for the 1338 abstracts identified only 15.9% were published (compared to an average in health of 45%). Published abstracts were found in 78 different journals. Multiauthor abstracts and oral presentations had higher rates of conversion. Substudy B demonstrated lag time between first publication and bibliographic indexing. Even after listing, idiosyncratic noninclusions were identified.
There are limitations to retrieval of all possible literature through electronic searching of bibliographic databases. Encouraging publication in indexed journals of studies presented at conferences, promoting selection of palliative care journals for database indexing, and searching more than one bibliographic database will improve the accessibility of existing and new knowledge in hospice and palliative care.
随着临终关怀和姑息治疗证据基础的不断发展，获取新知识对该学科提出了具体的挑战。本研究旨在描述姑息治疗和临终关怀会议摘要转化为期刊文章的比率，并强调一些姑息治疗文献可能无法检索，因为它们没有被书目数据库索引。
子研究 A 跟踪了在 caresearch.com.au 上的灰色文献数据库中选择的会议摘要的期刊发表情况。这些摘要通过对手工搜索 1980 年至 1999 年期间举行的 100 多个澳大利亚会议的论文集，包括在灰色文献数据库中。子研究 B 考察了三种国际临终关怀和姑息治疗期刊在四个广泛可用的书目数据库中的首次发表至 2001 年的索引情况，通过对期刊中的所有原始论文进行系统跟踪。
子研究 A 显示，在所确定的 1338 篇摘要中，只有 15.9%（相比之下，健康领域的平均水平为 45%）被发表。发表的摘要出现在 78 种不同的期刊中。多作者摘要和口头报告的转化率更高。子研究 B 表明首次发表和书目索引之间存在时间滞后。即使列出了，也会发现特有的未包含情况。
通过对书目数据库进行电子检索，无法检索到所有可能的文献。鼓励在会议上发表的研究在索引期刊上发表，促进选择姑息治疗期刊进行数据库索引，以及搜索多个书目数据库，将提高临终关怀和姑息治疗领域现有和新的知识的可及性。
