Do Clinical Trials Get Published After Presentation at Biomedical Meetings?
A Systematic Review of Follow-up Studies Erik von Elm1 and Roberta Scherer2 Objective To determine the rate at which abstracts describing results of randomized or controlled clinical trials are subsequently published in full and to investigate study factors associated with full publication. Design Systematic review, searching MEDLINE, Embase, and the Cochrane Library from the start of each database until May 2005 for reports of bibliographic follow-up studies examining the subsequent full publication of randomized or controlled clinical trial results initially presented in abstract or summary form. We identified additional reports through citations (Science Citation Index), and reference lists of included reports, author files, and by verbal communication. We excluded reports with less than 2 years of follow-up after the meeting or without information on numbers of abstracts examined or followed. We calculated weighted mean rates of full publication. Time to publication was analyzed us
