Introduction:

Many of the papers presented at scientific conferences do not complete their research cycle with the corresponding publication.

Objective:

Characterize the research papers presented at the International Dental Congress, Cuba 2015, and identify the factors associated to their publication.

Methods:

An observational analytical cross-sectional study was conducted to evaluate the characteristics of the papers presented. A search was carried out on Google Scholar in Spanish and English to verify whether the papers had been published in scientific journals. Generalized linear models were used to obtain prevalence ratios, 95% confidence intervals and p-values.

Results:

Of the 498 papers presented, 87 (17.47%) dealt with medical education, 183 (36.75%) were presented as electronic posters, only 13 were written in English (2.61%), 330 (66.27%) were research studies, 2 (0.61%) were multicenter, 56 (11.24 %) had student authors, 126 (25.30%) had four authors and 347 (69.68%) had a woman as their first author. 61 (12.25%) papers were published, mainly as original papers (n = 41; 77.05%); in 43 (70.49%) there were changes in their authorship. Presence of a foreign author was significantly associated to the publication of research studies (AR: 4.35, CI 95 %: 1.09-17.3; p = 0.038).

Conclusions:

A predominance was found of observational research papers written in Spanish. Only one out of every ten papers presented is published. Presence of a foreign author was significantly associated to such publication.

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