In Japan, more than 1, 200 medically-oriented meetings are held each year, with the number of presentations given at those meetings estimated at over 100, 000.
A questionnaire was sent to the member societies of the Japanese Association of Medical Sciences in order to obtain information about the character and the role of the meeting abstract. Moreover, Another questionnaire was sent to individual doctors and researchers regarding their views of the abstract selection process. It was found that 65 percent of the meetings held by the member societies, especially large-scale and clinicallyoriented societies, have a referee system. However, submitted abstracts are rarely rejected (average 9 percent), and only the subject matter is supposed to be checked. Moreover, it was clear that most doctors and researchers recognize the necessity of a refereeusystem for national meetings of general interest where they present their research achievements, and think research meetings where a small group of specialists gather to discuss a certain subject have less need for a referee system.
Through the use of these two questionnaires, two main concepts were obtained:(1) a referee system is necessary to maintain high-level meetings, and (2) all applicants should be given an opportunity to present thier papers.
