Duplicate Submissions to the American Society of Hematology (ASH) and American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Meetings.

Modern medical practice has benefitted significantly from the ability of practitioners and scientists to effectively present and debate their discoveries. Presentations at large subspecialty meetings have been an integral part of this process. The guidelines for abstract submissions to ASH and ASCO discourage repeated submission of the same or similar information.

We searched all submissions to the 2009 ASCO meeting involving hematologic malignancies (leukemia, lymphoma, MDS, myeloma and myeloproliferative disorders) and compared these with abstracts from the preceding 2008 ASH meeting to identify duplicate submissions. Duplicate abstracts were identified by correlating subject and author data through the online search engines of the respective organization's websites. Duplication was defined as the repetitive publication or presentation of data that did not seem to differ significantly in terms of content or clinical and scientific impact. The conflict of interest disclosures from the abstracts were examined to identify submissions utilizing pharmaceutical industry support, although such disclosures can be incomplete and it can be difficult to assess the precise role of the industry participants in the process. Hematopoietic stem cell transplant submissions were excluded from this analysis due to the low rate of duplication (3/32) ASCO transplant submissions were similar to those from ASH.

19% (47/250) of non-transplant hematologic malignancy ASCO abstracts had been previously presented at oral/poster sessions or published at the 2008 ASH meeting. 71 of the 250 submissions (28%) had authors from pharmaceutical companies while a total of 40% acknowledged research support from pharmaceutical companies (likely but not definitely always related to the content of the abstract). A significant fraction of the submitted and presented abstracts had major involvement with pharmaceutical companies as defined by authorship and/or research support (see table). The degree of pharmaceutical involvement was somewhat higher in the group of duplicate submissions.

A significant fraction of abstracts submitted to and presented at ASCO are very similar to work previously submitted to ASH. The titles of the abstracts are usually changed somewhat and the order of the authors is frequently shuffled. These findings are similar to a previous analysis of the 2006-ASH/2007-ASCO meetings done by one of the authors (CAS – unpublished data). There are many motivations for repeat presentation, including marketing or publicity opportunities for pharmaceutical companies as well as career advancement for academic investigators. Although arguments might be made that these meetings address different audiences, given the size limitations of the meeting agendas, duplicative presentations may potentially restrict other novel ideas from exposure and should be discouraged.

No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.