How to be the Best Abstract Reviewer

Learn how to review abstracts effectively with tips on novelty, relevance, quality, conclusions, rubrics, and scoring from Dr. Chevis Shannon.

Hi, I'm Dr. Chevis Shannon with ASRM, and today I want to talk to you about how to be the best abstract reviewer possible. When I'm reviewing an abstract, I keep in mind a couple of things. What's the state of completion of the abstract? So what I'm talking about is, is that study completely done and the abstract is including final results? Or is the abstract you're reviewing including preliminary results, which will lead to a final product at the end and at the presentation time? The second point I look at is the novelty and the innovativeness of your abstract.

Now, we're going to talk about how most of the abstracts fit into a different category, but there's a low percentage that are going to fit into this category, and those are going to include your level one evidence, so your randomized control trials, and also your preclinical or your translational studies, where you've got your discovery and innovativeness, maybe a new protein line or maybe a new, you know, gene change that's occurred through an epigenetic study. So those are the types of things that you want to look at and that you want to score from a novel and innovativeness perspective. The third point that I consider when reviewing an abstract is the relevance to and the advancement of the field.

So let's take some examples. Is the study contributing to a knowledge gap in the literature or a gap in the field that we may not understand or know about? Maybe we've not even asked this question yet. What about treatment and interventions? Is that study looking at a treatment or an intervention that already exists in our field, but maybe looking at it from a different perspective, like a specific patient population or maybe a geographic location? What about educational interventions? Let's think about those educational interventions and how they're relevant or may advance our field with regards to patient care.

If we're training our trainees or maybe we're doing an educational intervention for our patients, does it improve their outcome? Does it improve their communication with providers? Does it improve their ability to have better outcomes and participate better with their treatment and management and with their health care providers? When you're thinking about basic science or pre-clinical and you're looking at relevance and advancement to the field, maybe you're talking about a study that's an epigenetic study where you've seen that study be successful or that author be successful in making changes to DNA that can impact the field. Or what about a study that evaluates the addition or the subtraction of a protein in a patient with a specific disease diagnosis? All of these examples lead to and talk about relevance to an advancement of the field. Okay, so now we've talked about the novelty and the innovativeness of some abstracts, but the majority of abstracts that you're going to review aren't going to fit into that category.

And so what's very important when you're reviewing those abstracts is to look at the quality of those abstracts. Okay, so think about how if it's well written and does it flow well. That's super important, particularly in a clinical research study.

Is this study well thought out and does it answer a focused question, whether it's pre-clinical, basic science, translational, or clinical research? You should be able to easily answer that question as a reviewer. And at the end of the day, do the results of this study contribute to the literature in a positive way? Even if it's a negative study, a negative results study actually has impact. We don't want to discount those studies because they actually can contribute to the field and contribute to the literature.

The last couple of points that I want you to consider as an abstract reviewer, where does the study land with regards to your level of evidence? Is it a retrospective cohort study? Is it a systematic review? Is it a pre-clinical study? Is it a randomized control trial? Consider how the study impacts the field. Let's also think about and answer the question, where on the bench-to-bedside spectrum the study lies. Now this doesn't mean that you want to give it a poor score if it's a clinical study versus a basic science study, but this will help you assess the other points that we've made as regard to scoring.

Okay, let's talk about conclusions. Now as an abstract writer, conclusions are very important, but as a reviewer, I think conclusions are the most important, and I always read those first. Not really sure why, but I think it helps me as I'm reading the abstract itself to make sure that things flow and that at the end of the day, the author is telling me what I need to know about the study in a way that doesn't overstate or understate the conclusions that that author has provided in the abstract itself.

So we've talked about a few things that you, as an abstract reviewer, should be looking for when you're reviewing an abstract. There's a couple of questions that I want to make sure that we address that I get asked all the time. First off is, do I have to follow the rubric or is there a rubric? The answer is yes and yes.

You should always follow the rubric. If you have questions about how the rubric is stated between your scores, please reach out to the individuals that are responsible for that abstract review and they can help clarify anything that you may need to understand. Secondly, is the content expertise as a reviewer? I get asked all the time, this is not my field of expertise or I do this in the field, but I don't do that in the field.

Can I still review? The answer is yes, you can. You can read an abstract and determine if it's effectively written. You can read an abstract for quality.

Is it well written? Is there a focus question? Do the conclusions follow the results that were provided? What you may not be able to do and what you may need to say to your individuals that are responsible for the review itself, is that I don't have an expertise in this particular area. You may want to have somebody re-review this abstract for content. If that's the case, we are happy to do that.

So don't be afraid to say, I can read it for this, but I can't read it for that. I can review it for this, but I can't review it for that. Because we want your expertise and there's a lot of content and there's a lot of abstracts out there that you can review and you can do well and help us be successful and get through our abstract reviewing process.