CardioExchange Archive

CardioExchange, an NEJM practice community for medical professionals dedicated to improving cardiac patient care, was active from 2009 to 2015. CardioExchange fostered discussion between clinicians from across the globe.

November 17th, 2013

Brainstorming the Abstracts Submission Process at AHA.13

Several Cardiology Fellows who are attending AHA.13 in Dallas this week are blogging for CardioExchange. The Fellows include Vimal Ramjee, Siqin Ye, Seth Martin, Reva Balakrishnan, and  Saurav Chatterjee. You can find the previous post here. For more of our AHA.13 coverage of late-breaking clinical trials, interviews with the authors of the most important research, and blogs from our fellows on the most interesting presentations at the meeting, check out our AHA.13 Headquarters.

One of the less-known and advertised meeting/sessions at AHA.13, held in one of the smaller rooms, turned out to be an intriguing and provocative gathering.

A few of us were invited to discuss the possibility of improving the abstracts submission process. Some ways that might expedite or improve the process and make submissions an easier endeavor seemed pretty obvious. At the top of the list were things like reducing or eliminating submission fees for early-career individuals and making the submissions website more user-friendly and intuitive. Another idea was to upgrade the submissions website to give details of the requirements more in the tune of “instructions to authors” from the front-tier journals (which could better guide the initial submissions for the “newbies”).

Other ideas were bounced around — having a rewards system for earlier submissions, providing feedback/peer review for subsequently rejected pieces, and ways to ensure that abstracts reflected the final content of the subsequent complete manuscript at publication. Finally, wider attention for interesting sessions or presentations of early career individuals could enhance the current submissions process.

Do you have any insights about these ideas? Do you have other ideas to improve the abstracts submission process?

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2 Responses to “Brainstorming the Abstracts Submission Process at AHA.13”

  1. Siqin Ye, MD says:
    November 18, 2013 at 8:11 pm

    I participated in this session yesterday as well. It didn’t occur to me during the session, but I just saw the twitter feed from Circulation: QCOR highlighting a number of high impact abstracts, such as the one characterizing the rate and reasons for early termination of trials registered at clinicaltrials.gov (http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/128/22_MeetingAbstracts/A18048?sid=7da33b7e-d559-495b-9a15-3d442a32e101). I think this is another really cool way to encourage abstract submission and recognize good research!

  2. Reva Balakrishnan, MD, MPH says:
    November 18, 2013 at 9:11 pm

    I like the idea of getting feedback on why your abstract was rejected. As someone who has gone through that experience, having some at least minimal feedback would provide an opportunity for growth and improvement in the quality of subsequent submissions (and wouldn’t leave you feeling so perplexed!)