Brazilian Studies Presented at the ASCO Annual Meetings - 2001 through 2007: Increasing Output with Low Publication Rates

Abstract

Clinical cancer research is increasing in Brazil, and several recent important studies in medical oncology have included a substantial number of Brazilian patients. However, it is unclear to what extent there is a proportional increase in research originated in Brazil. We attempted to approach this question by conducting a bibliometric analysis of Brazilian studies presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting. We conducted a manual search of the 24.998 abstracts published in the Program Proceedings of the ASCO meetings of 2001 through 2007, and defined as Brazilian abstracts those whose at least two-thirds of institutions were from Brazil. We located 244 Brazilian studies (0.97% of total). There was a significant increase in the proportion of Brazilian studies along the years comprised in the study period (P=0.017). Of the 244 studies, 69.6% were not presented at the meeting, featuring only in the Program Proceedings as "publication only". After a median follow up of 35 months, only 16.9% of the abstracts from 2001 - 2005 were published in journals indexed in Medline or Lilacs databases, with a median time before publication of 13.5 months. Our study provides empiric evidence for an increase in the scientific output on the part of Brazilian cancer researchers, but it also suggests that efforts are needed in order to increase the full publication of the abstracts.