Advantages and potential dangers of presentation before publication: third in a series on editorship.

I n all fields of medicine, many investigators choose to present their research at scientific meetings before publication. In ophthalmology, a variety of organizations provide venues for such presentations, for example, at the annual meetings of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology or the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Presentations at scientific meetings provide an important venue for researchers to share their methods, results, and conclusions with some of their peers. Valuable feedback may result in the adoption of different methods, analysis of additional results, or restructuring of conclusions. The end result may be that the scientific community benefits as the work is refined and improved before publication.