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project completion.24 As such, it is more common that large observational cohort studies are used instead of RCTs to assess the efficacy and risks of surgical therapies. However, there are certain steps that can be taken in order to encourage surgeons to produce higher quality publications, such as improving education regarding research methodologies, development of large prospective patient databases and greater funding towards surgical research. It is clear from the results that there are a select number of vascular surgeons who author a disproportionate number of publications compared to the remaining cohort. In particular, these authors are responsible for producing significantly more high-level evidence research. This is likely due to a number of contributing factors. The results show that the top 10 authors have a significantly longer publication age compared to the rest of the cohort (30 vs 15 years, p < 0.05), which suggests that senior authors publish higher quality research. It is also likely that these top authors are employed as heads of department or are affiliated with major academic institutions, and therefore have greater resources to produce high-quality research. Thoracoabdominal aortic pathologies and peripheral vascular disease were the two most popular topics of research among Australasian vascular surgeons. Furthermore, endovascular surgery techniques surpassed open surgery as the most researched technique. This distribution is unsurprising given that endovascular management of aortic and peripheral arterial diseases have in recent years become first-line therapy for many conditions, prompted by major studies such as the DREAM,25 EVAR26,27 and BASIL.28 RCTs which have demonstrated equivalence and arguable advantages to endovascular over open techniques, through follow-up trials of similar scientific robustness, are limited. Furthermore, the clear increase in hybrid surgical publications, from only 1 article between 1998 and 2008, to over 50 articles in the following decade is in keeping with the current trend in clinical practice, which has seen increasing adoption of hybrid operating theatres and techniques to treat complex vascular pathologies that require simultaneous open and endovascular approaches. First, the use of the RACS ‘Find a Surgeon’ website tool to extract the list of vascular surgeons in Australia and New Zealand had the potential to omit newer surgeons. Correlation of the list with ANZSVS, a second source, was performed in order to produce a more accurate cohort of surgeons. Second, Scopus was used as the sole research database to collate the list of publications by Australasian vascular surgeons. While it is a reliable resource with the capability to produce and analyse individual author profiles, there is the possibility that relevant publications may have been omitted from the analysis. Efforts were made to minimise this by correlating each surgeon’s author profile with their known affiliations and merging separate profiles for the same author where appropriate. This bibliometric analysis describes an objective process of quantifying research output by Australasian vascular surgeons. The methodology is simple, easily accessible and reproducible for other clinician cohorts. Within this group, comparative author analysis demonstrates that there are a small number of Australasian vascular surgeons contributing to not only the bulk of research output with respect to publication and citation numbers but also the production of high-quality research. A further study that directly analyses each author’s research background, as well as their co-author relationship with other surgeons would also be of significant benefit in analysing factors that influence research output. The data from this study, in conjunction with other metrics such as h-index, enable stratification of authors in an unbiased and transparent manner. This allows identification of high contributors in particular topics in order to direct resource allocation for future research. This bibliometric study is a comprehensive and objective analysis of the research output of all vascular surgeons in Australia and New Zealand in the last 20 years. They have made a significant
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