Publication of summaries presented at the scientific congresses of medical students, Peru 2002-2009: Characteristics and related factors

Objectives. To determine the publication rate of abstracts submitted at the national scientific meetings of medical students in Peru between 2002 and 2009, and associated factors. Materials and methods. A retrospective cohort was performed; the characteristics of overall abstract submitted were assessed. In addition, whether they were published in scientific journals was determined by way of a search strategy validated using Google Scholar. Crude and adjusted relative risks (RR) were calculated using Poisson regression with robust variance to assess association with the analyzed factors. Results. 532 abstracts were analyzed, 52 (9.8%) of which were published in scientific journals after their presentation at a scientific meeting. All of them were published in Peruvian journals written in Spanish. The most important journal in which they were published was Ciencia e Investigación Médica Estudiantil Latinoamericana (CIMEL) (13/52). The median of publication time was 13 months (range: 0-75). The fact that a student from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (RR: 5.18; CI95%:2.3-11.6) is the author of the abstract and that the abstract was collaboratively written by students from two universities (RR: 3.64; CI95%:1.1-11.7) are associated factors in the multivariate analysis. Conclusions. The publication rate of abstract submitted at national scientific meetings of medical students in Peru is low. New strategies should be taken, and the existing ones should be reinforced in order to increase the publication rate of the abstract submitted.