Publication rates of congress abstracts is associated with abstract quality: Evaluation of Turkish National Medical Education Congresses and Symposia between 2010 and 2014 using MERSQI

There are many parameters that could be used to evaluate the quality of scientific meetings such as publication rates of meeting abstracts as full-text articles after the meeting or scoring with validated quality scales/tools that evaluate individual papers, project proposals, or submitted abstracts. This study aimed to determine the full-text publication rates for abstracts presented at Turkish National Medical Education Congresses and Symposia and to assess the quality of given abstracts. Abstracts presented at national medical education congresses and symposia between 2010 and 2014 in Türkiye were evaluated. Initially, the abstracts were evaluated if they were published as full-text articles in international and national peer-reviewed journals following the meeting. Secondly, the quality of presented abstracts was assessed with the Medical Education Research Study Quality Instrument (MERSQI) scale. Overall publication rate for the abstracts was 11.3%. The publication rate of oral and poster presentations were 26.6% and 8.1%, respectively. Oral presentations had a statistically higher publication rate than poster presentations (p = .000). The mean MERSQI score for abstracts was 7.73 ± 2.59. The oral presentations had higher MERSQI mean scores than poster presentations (8.28 ± 2.46 vs. 7.61 ± 2.6; p = .032). Similarly, published abstracts had a significantly higher score compared to unpublished abstracts (10.07 ± 2.74 vs. 7.43 ± 2.41; p = .000). Interestingly, there was no statistical difference between the mean MERSQI scores of the published oral and poster presentations (9.33 ± 2.45 vs. 10.61 ± 2.72; p = .101). This study showed that the main factor for a meeting abstract to be published as a full-text article is the scientific quality of the study. The quality of presentations at annual medical education meetings in Türkiye were low compared with international meetings which did not improve over five years. An institutional policy that would set quality standards for medical education research and increase the awareness of researchers on the topic might help improve the design, execution, and reporting of such studies in Türkiye. The MERSQI could be a valuable tool to monitor the quality of submitted abstracts and to increase the awareness of novice researchers on high quality research.