A survey of the publication history of randomly selected IADR/AADR abstracts presented in 1983 and 1984.

IADR/AADR abstracts of research projects to be presented at the Annual Meeting are published each year in the Journal of Dental Research. An assumption often made is that the material in these abstracts is subsequently published as journal articles. The validity of this assumption was assessed in this study. Following a review of the literature to establish study criteria, the specific objectives of this study were to determine: (1) the percentage of IADR/AADR abstracts subsequently published as articles, (2) the length of time from abstract to publication, and (3) the amount of discrepancy between abstract and article. Ten percent of the IADR/AADR abstracts from the years 1983 (n = 125) and 1984 (n = 150) were randomly selected and surveyed for their publication history. Major reference sources were checked for determination of whether articles had resulted from the abstracts. Of the 1983-1984 abstracts surveyed, the results indicated that more abstracts were not published (78.5% in 1983/76.0% in 1984) than were published (21.6% in 1983/24.0% in 1984). Of those articles previously published as abstracts, the greatest number (44.4% in 1983 47.2% in 1984) were published within ten to 21 months following presentation. The greatest amount of discrepancy between the abstract and the article involved names and numbers of authors, titles, purpose statements, and results/conclusions. In other health disciplines, the percentage of abstracts subsequently published as articles ranged from 31.1% to 53.9%. Since a smaller percentage of the IADR/AADR abstracts surveyed in this study were ultimately published (21.6% to 24%). IADR/AADR should consider various strategies to improve the quality of abstracts and their accessibility.