Abstracts vs. manuscripts: making informed decisions

0:00 Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients. When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research program. Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit. However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.

0:40 For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene. Welcome to today's episode of the Clinician Researcher podcast. I'm your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and I'm super excited to be talking to you today about abstracts and manuscript submissions. So this came up for us a few days ago, where we were, as a team, talking about abstract submissions. So our major society abstract submission deadline is on the horizon, and we've been talking about submitting an abstract for a few weeks, but now we're close to the deadline.

1:27 So all of a sudden, everyone's like, oh my goodness, I'm not ready. This analysis is not done. Oh no. And there's a lot of angst and a lot of worry. And as the leader of my research team, I have an opportunity to stop and reset, reframe, and help everybody just reset the expectations for how I feel about abstracts and manuscripts. So I'm going to share with you what I shared with my team. And this may not be your own view. And if you've been in research a long time, you probably have some very, very strong views about how things should be done. So this is really a matter of personal opinion, and you are welcome to have a different opinion. I would love it if you would share it with me, because I'm always open to see how other investigators are thinking about this.

2:12 But I'm going to share with you a couple of things that I talked to my team about with regard to abstracts versus manuscripts submissions. So the first thing I talked about is, first of all, just for everyone to pause and recognize that they're doing outstanding work. If you are a researcher, especially if you are a physician doing research in any capacity, kudos to you, because for the most part, you didn't directly go into medical school to be a researcher. You went into medical school for clinical training, because that's what medical school is about, clinical training. And if along your medical school residency fellowship, you've actually gotten research training, or maybe you didn't get research training, and somehow you're making research work anyway, kudos to you, because you've gone above and beyond your training in order to have a research program that's doing work.

3:04 And so first of all, I want you to recognize that you do good work. Congratulations. Well done. And you should be celebrated that you are going above and beyond really your medical training to do research. And you may say, well, I did have research training, and that's why I'm doing research. Great. That's not everybody. But even if you had the training, the fact that you are actually doing the research is to be commended, especially because you probably are still seeing patients. And it's hard to do both. And there are many people who get the research training who don't do the research. So I'm saying pause and just recognize that you're doing good work and you should be celebrated.

3:46 And if there's nobody celebrating you, I'm celebrating you right now. And I'm asking you to pause and celebrate yourself. First recognize that you're doing excellent work and well done. The second thing that I think is important to share is that, you know what, abstracts are great. Abstracts are great because they allow you to communicate your science pretty early on. So it takes time to develop a full manuscript for publication. And you submit it, it goes through the review process. It could be a few months before you finally can say, wow, this work that I've done is now out in the public for everyone to see. It's now published. It takes a while for that to happen.

4:26 Abstracts are an opportunity to present your preliminary research before it's fully mature. And the process for review is stringent, at least depending on the meeting. But it's usually not as well scrutinized as when your manuscript is being submitted for publication. And how do I know that? If you look at all the abstracts that are submitted and how many actually make it to publication, it's a fraction. It's a fraction of the abstracts that are published in meetings that actually make it to publication of the full manuscript. So you know, the abstract is a way to get your work out there early and the scrutiny is not as great, and so it does allow you to communicate your science.

5:08 And what are the benefits of that? Number one, you get to talk about your science in a public space. People ask you questions, you answer them. And it's great to have the opportunity to answer questions about your research, because many times you think a lot of the things you're doing are intuitive and people have questions. And then you have to ask yourself, wait a minute, why are we doing this? And so answering questions forces you to do that. What else is a benefit of abstract submission? Well, the other benefit is that you get to go to a meeting and you meet other people and they ask you questions, you ask them questions back, you get to know each other, boom, you're networking.

5:49 And presenting an abstract, whether that is a poster abstract or an oral abstract, gives you the opportunity to meet people in a way that's legit, which is, you know, it feels a little bit different if you just walk up to someone and say, hey, I am and here's my card. It's different when they walk up to your poster and you're having a conversation, then it feels natural. The networking feels more natural. So abstract presentation, whether that be poster or oral, is an opportunity to present your work and to network as well. The other thing that abstract presentation gives you is an opportunity to travel and really meet other researchers and learn about their work. And so it expands your horizons because you're like, oh, you know, they're doing something similar to us, but look at what they did instead.

6:35 And it helps you think differently about the work that you do. And so abstract submissions are really important. But here's the thing about abstracts. You know, you want to make sure that your abstract submission doesn't get in the way of the rest of your science. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, sometimes in the rush to do an abstract, you put all your work aside. You're like, I'm just going to work on this abstract because it's the most important thing in life. And you know what, it feels important because a deadline is there and that's what deadlines do. They kind of force you into action. But it's not more important than the work you were doing yesterday or doing today and will continue to do tomorrow. And there just needs to be space created for it so it doesn't like, you know, move all your work aside.

7:18 And so the thing to recognize is that the work you're doing is still important and abstract submissions are important, but they shouldn't necessarily like eclipse everything. And so it's important to pace yourself and prepare for abstract submissions in advance so that it doesn't become like a crisis two nights before the abstract is due. Okay. Now, sometimes you are ready to submit a paper for consideration in a journal and you know that it may take a few months for this paper to be accepted and you're like, oh, I'll just put it together and submit it in an abstract. Yes, mature, mature research that's, you know, all the analysis is already complete. It's ready for prime time.

7:59 Those are most likely to become oral abstract presentations, which is so prestigious. But here's the rub. For most meetings, you don't get to publish your paper before the abstract is presented at the meeting. And so sometimes, abstracts can delay your submission of the full manuscript. And that's important to consider when you're submitting a manuscript that you want to be published by the time perhaps a grant goes to review. And so you also want to consider whether the abstract submission is worth it if it delays the submission and publishing or publication of a full original manuscript. So those are the things you have to weigh. And people always say, oh, talk to your mentor.

8:42 And it's great. Please talk to your mentor. And for those of you who are leading, and you may not even have a mentor to talk to about it, it's just important to weigh these things and to recognize that published manuscript is weightier than abstract. And so think about that as you're making your decisions. I think what's also important is to prioritize the value of your time as well. And so it's great to go for meetings. Everyone should go for a meeting. Everyone should have the opportunity to network. But also think about the investment that it takes to go to a meeting. And if the work that you're presenting is not necessarily work that is mature, and so you know that you probably will submit it and it will be a poster abstract, you want to ask, is it worth the investment of submitting it so that you can go to a meeting halfway across the country, pay a couple of thousand dollars, and submit it as a poster?

9:34 So those are all things you need to consider. At the end of the day, what am I saying? Please communicate your science. Let people know what you're doing. It is so important that the work you do is shared. Because if you don't share it, we don't know about it. And if we don't know about it, then we can't use the information that you're sharing with us to transform our work or to transform patients' lives by implementing the work that you're doing. So please share your work. But as you're considering abstract submission versus full-length manuscript submission, recognize that they're not the same. One actually does have higher value than the other. The full published manuscript has higher value. And many abstracts don't make it to submission. So when you're thinking of many abstracts don't make it to a full manuscript publication.

10:16 So when you're thinking about contributing, you want to make sure you're contributing your highest value work. Sometimes things that are not so high value or high quality can make it to an abstract and be accepted as an abstract. And then when you go to submit the full-length manuscript, you recognize that the standards are not the same for submitting a full-length manuscript. So you do want to make sure that you're doing high-quality work that will ultimately make it into the sphere of publication where everybody gets to really understand what you do. All right. So at the end of the day, do I say submit the abstract, don't submit the abstract? You should absolutely make the decision on your own. But you should just think about the difference between the two and think about whether it's worth the energy invested to go for the abstract when you maybe could work on the original manuscript submission, which may be a bigger deal than the abstract.

11:05 All right. That's all I have for you today. It's been a pleasure talking with you. I look forward to talking with you again next time on the Clinician Researcher Podcast. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Clinician Researcher Podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. If you found the information in this episode to be helpful, don't keep it all to yourself. Someone else needs to hear it. So take a minute right now and share it.

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