OnCo
ideasIdea

End the abstract-to-paper gap: require full results with any conference presentation

Trial results are often presented at conferences months or years before the full paper appears, leaving doctors to act on slides. Require that the full structured results are published the same day.

Practice-changing results are frequently presented as late-breaking abstracts with full publication lagging a year or more, and some never appear. The proposal is a joint policy of the major congresses and journals: any presented phase 3 result must be accompanied by simultaneous publication or deposition of the full structured results package (protocol, statistical analysis plan, results tables), with the abstract itself openly licensed.

Hypothesis
Simultaneous deposition will eliminate the median lag between presentation and full availability and reduce discrepancies between abstracts and eventual papers.
Rationale
Studies find meaningful discrepancies between conference abstracts and subsequent publications; the New England Journal of Medicine and others already coordinate simultaneous publication for some trials, showing feasibility.
What would test it
Measure abstract-to-publication lag and discrepancy rate for phase 3 oncology trials presented at major congresses over two years; implement the policy at one congress and re-measure.
Maturity
speculative
Who has to act
policy
Cost to try
Small (under $1M)
Years to first evidence
2
Bottlenecks it attacks
  • Knowledge reaches practice too slowly · Knowledge diffusion is slow: it takes years for a proven result to change what most patients receive, and no one can keep up with the literature.
  • Failures are hidden · Negative trials, failed drugs and abandoned programmes are rarely published, so the same mistakes are repeated.

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