Background/Purpose: The ACR Convergence meeting attracts rheumatology researchers worldwide to present their peer- reviewed abstracts for a global audience either as a poster or oral presentation. This venue serves as a vital platform for both senior researchers and newcomers to exchange ideas and gain advice from peers leading to innovation and progress in our field. However, it is unknown how often these works transition into research journal publications, a metric for research productivity, quality, and dissemination.

Objective: To evaluate the publication rates of abstracts presented at ACR Convergence in 2015 and 2018, examine factors associated with full paper publication, and compare with other internal medicine specialty conferences.

Methods: We indexed and catalogued 6,270 abstracts (~3,000 per year) presented at the ACR Annual Scientific Meeting (later to be named Convergence) in 2015 and 2018 from the online archive. These were additionally categorized by the following presentation type: poster, concurrent session (oral), or plenary (oral). We then manually searched the top 20 results of both Google Scholar and PubMed to determine the publication status of each abstract as of June 10, 2024. Publication status criteria included: matching at least three keywords between the abstract and any resulting manuscript, having at least one common author, and publication occurring after and inclusive of the year of abstract acceptance. Data was compiled into an Excel spreadsheet, categorizing abstracts as ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for publication. Publication rates were then calculated using Excel formulas based on these categorizations.

Results: Of the 6270 total abstracts, 5890 were analyzed. Among these, 3283 (55.76%) were published as full articles in peer-reviewed journals indexed in Google Scholar or PubMed. Specifically, 1658 abstracts (55.32%) from 2015 and 1625 (56.17%) from 2018 were successfully published within 9 years and 6 years, respectively. Plenary presentations, totaling 28 (11 in 2015 and 17 in 2018), exhibited the highest publication rates: 81.81% in 2015 and 94.11% in 2018. Concurrent presentations, totaling 751 (354 in 2015 and 397 in 2018), showed publication rates of 67.23% in 2015 and 83.83% in 2018. Posters, totaling 5129 (2632 in 2015 and 2479 in 2018), had publication rates of 53.6% in 2015 and 54.86% in 2018. These rates surpass those reported in similar studies of other internal medicine and subspecialty conferences.

Conclusion: To our knowledge, this is the first study to compare publication rates from a rheumatology conference. The overall publication rates were 55.32% in 2015 and 56.17% in 2018, significantly higher than those reported for internal medicine and other subspecialties, although more recent comparative studies are lacking. Further analysis will investigate predictive factors for abstract publication, such as the year of publication, type of journal, journal impact factor, category of the abstract (e.g., translational, clinical), and specific rheumatic diseases (e.g., rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, psoriasis).

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