Methodologists and their methods - Do methodologists write up their conference presentations or is it just 15 minutes of fame?

Objectives: To assess the extent to which abstracts of methodological resea rch, initially presented at meetings on systematic reviews, have gone on to be published as full articles. Methods: Full publication was assessed in three ways: a search was carried out of The Cochrane Library; a search was conducted using MEDLINE; and a qu estionnaire was sent to the contact author of each abstract. Results: Approximately half of the abstracts had not been, or were unlikely ever to be, published in full. Conclusions: The rate of full publication of abstracts related to the metho dology of systematic reviews seems similar to that for randomized trials.