Publication Patterns of Posters and Oral Presentations at the Annual Meeting of the Joint AANS/CNS Spine Section

Introduction: The American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) and Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) Spine Section annually serve as a convergence point for spine-focused research and enthusiasts to collaborate and gain scientific ground. Recently, academic productivity for neurosurgery-related publications has surged. These trends have been studied within respective neurosurgical specialties but without respect to specific professional organizations. This study aims to assess the publication rate specifically regarding the Spine Section at AANS/CNS. We aim to investigate the publication trends regarding spinal research presented at the AANS/CNS meeting.

Methods: The abstract titles for all accepted oral presentations and posters were searched using PubMed. A match was defined as adequate comparability between title, authors, methods, and results. Variables collected included article title, lead author, publication year, and number of citations.

Results: Of the 973 total oral presentations and abstract posters from the 2014-2018 Annual Meetings of AANS/CNS Spine Section, 63.8%(n=621) have been published. Published articles had a total citation count of 13,641 with a total average of 26.1 per paper. The average time from year of presentation to year of publication was 0.8 years. Oral presentations demonstrated higher publication percentages than poster presentations (70.8% vs 58.2%).

Conclusion : In conclusion, more than half of accepted oral presentations and posters were published in credible peer-reviewed journals such as Nature, Journal of Neurosurgery, World Neurosurgery, Neurosurgery, and Journal of Clinical Neuroscience. This reflects the high quality of studies presented in the spine section. Literature work such as this study is important for comparing productivity within and amongst different specialties for improvement.