A Report of the 13th Annual Research Congress of Iran’s Medical Sciences Students

 

Afshin Khani1, Farid Alinezhad1, Hamid Mahdizadeh1 , Mohammad Reza Banihosseini1, Fatemeh Izadpanah1,

Amin Zarghami1, Soraya Khafri2

 

1Student Research Committee, Babol University of Medical Sciences, Babol, Iran.

2Department of social medicine, Babol University of Medical Sciences, Babol, Iran.

 

 

Dear Editor

 

Every year Iranian students of medical sciences share the results of their research projects in the Annual Research Congress of Iranian Medical Sciences Students (ARCIMSS) [1,2]. This year, the 13th congress was held by the student research committee (SRC) of Babol University of medical sciences in Babolsar town from October 9th to 12th of 2012.

The major research fields of this year’s congress were basic sciences, clinical sciences, dentistry, pharmacy, paramedical sciences, nursing, midwifery, physiotherapy and rehabilitation, healthcare and nutrition, health system researches (HSR), medical education researches, Islamic medicine, traditional and alternative medicine, ethics in medical researches and modern technologies. There was also a special section about innovations, inventions and interdisciplinary researches.

In this congress, the scientific team mainly aimed to improve the quality of accepted abstracts by training the reviewers and enhancing the reviewing process. On the other hand, for the first time in student-held congresses we implemented ethical considerations in submission steps according to which no abstract would have permitted to enter the reviewing process without completing the ethical commitment form in which the content of the article must be approved by corresponding author or deputy of research of that university.

Altogether, 2065 abstracts were submitted from 59 universities of Islamic republic of Iran in the congress’s website (Figure-1). The number of submitted abstracts to this year’s congress was the second highest prevalence of submissions in all previous twelve congresses (Figure-2). The mandatory ethical commitment form was the likely cause of lower submission rate compared to previous congresses.

All abstracts were screened by the scientific team for potential structural errors and those with significant errors were excluded from the review process. After excluding 264 abstracts, the name of authors, universities, research centers, cities, and hospitals were removed from the body of the abstracts in order to provide a blind reviewing process and avoid any further bias. One thousand and eighty abstracts were sent for reviewing process to 79 student reviewers. All reviewers were selected according to curriculum vitae’s score, qualification exam’s score and the proportion devoted to each particular section. Each abstract were evaluated by three independent reviewers and based on the mean given scores of abstracts, 850 abstracts were selected and sent for evaluation of faculty members.

Eventually, 505 abstracts were accepted for presentation (362 poster presentation,

101 oral presentations and 42 poster-talk presentation). The submitted and accepted abstracts in each discipline were indicated in figure-3. The accepted abstracts were scheduled to present in 14 oral panels, 4 poster-talk panels and 3 poster panels. Furthermore, 15 workshops were held during the congress days for both student and faculty members’ participants.

Besides all the educational and research programs, for the first time in the history of student congresses, there was a meeting held by several active researchers in student research fields on the topic of “pathophysiology of student congresses and the requirement for having too many congresses” that got much attention by the participants. Another innovation in this congress was keynote lecture. It was a short presentation performed by specialists in the outset of each panels regarding the new approaches and accomplishments in that field and presented by the pioneers of that specific field from the host university.

Altogether, this congress was a great success for the staff and executive team in the first place and then for all the researchers and participants. It was enjoyable for all the guests and participants to have an annual follow up of other researchers in different medical fields.

 

Acknowledgment

 

We would like to appreciate all the people who participated in this congress, especially all the members of Babol Students research committee who without their cooperation this project would not be accomplished. We also thank deputy of research and technology of ministry of health for the financial support of the ARCIMSS 13th.

Financial Disclosure

 

All costs of this congress were paid from the deputy of research and technology of ministry of health. There was no financial gain for authors of this report.