Introduction:

The National Scientific Congress (NSC) is an annual event held in Peru in which medical students from all over the country present their research work.

Objectives:

To determine the publication rate in indexed scientific journals of research papers submitted to the NSCs held between 2010 and 2014, as well as the factors associated with their publication, and to describe the characteristics of the published papers.

Materials and methods:

Retrospective study in which 407 abstracts of research papers were reviewed. A publication time window of 6 years (from submission) was considered. A bivariate analysis was performed to assess differences between categorical and numerical variables using the chi-square and Mann-Whitney U tests, respectively. In addition, a multivariate analysis was performed using Poisson regression models (a crude and an adjusted model), calculating relative risk (RR) values with their respective 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) to determine the factors associated with the publication of papers. A significance level of p<0.05 was considered.

Results:

The publication rate and the median time until publication were 23.83% (95%CI: 19.93-28.23) and 14 months (IQR: 5-23), respectively. In the bivariate analysis, the year of submission and the number of advisors with experience in research that participated in the research paper were associated with the publication of the study (p=0.020 and p=0.007). In the multivariate analysis, it was found that papers with one advisor or those with two or more advisors were 2.19 and 2.61 times more likely to be published than those without advisors (RR=2.19, 95%IC: 1.10-4.36 and RR=2.61, 95%CI: 1.28-5.33, respectively).

Conclusions:

Nearly a quarter of the papers were published in a scientific journal and the participation of one or more advisors with research experience significantly increased the probability of publication.

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