Research that has been sponsored by pharmaceutical, medical device and biotechnology companies is often presented at scientific and medical conferences. Although there is an industry standard to guide the development of full publications (Good Publication Practice for Industry Sponsored Research, GPP3), until now, no specific guidelines or recommendations have been available to adequately describe best practice for conference presentations.

The Good Practice for Conference Abstracts and Presentations (GPCAP) recommendations address the specific challenges of developing abstracts and presentations for academic conferences. The authors are all experienced publication professionals, having worked for either medical communications agencies or pharmaceutical companies, who have encountered the practical challenges associated with conference presentations. Having drafted an initial framework, the draft recommendations were published as a preprint at PeerJ for public review and comment to gain broader feedback, which enabled the authors to refine the recommendations further, before submitting for publication.

The recommendations cover authorship and contributorship; transparency; development, review and approval of abstracts and presentations; guidance on re-presentation of data (encore abstracts); copyright considerations, and appropriate citation of conference presentations. While developed with pharmaceutical industry sponsored research in mind, the authors believe that these recommendations are applicable to all research submitted to conferences, and encourage readers from other fields to offer suggestions for further development via their website.

By following Good Practice for Conference Abstracts and Presentations: GPCAP recommendations, industry professionals, authors and conference organizers will improve consistency, transparency and integrity of publications submitted to conferences worldwide.

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Content from the GPCAP press release, published 5 June 2019.