An evaluation of Irish general surgical research publications from 2000 to 2009

Maintaining a high standard of research, and being competitive in the funding application process requires a coordinated and focused research strategy. The first step in the formulation of such a strategy is the identification of those centres, and specifically those areas of study, in which Irish surgical research has previously performed strongly. The aim of this paper was to evaluate all surgical research produced in the Republic of Ireland in the first ten years of the new millennium.

All publications originating from adult Irish general surgical units between the years 2000-2009 were identified from Pubmed and Medline databases. All publications were examined for senior author, originating institute, theme, research model and publishing journal.

There were a total of 590 publications in Irish general surgical units during the study period. The top publishing hospitals were Institution 1 (129:21%), Institution 2 (82:13.9%) and Institution 3 (81:13.7%). One hundred and thirty three papers were published in journals with impact factors > 4.5. Papers were more likely to be published in journals with impact factors > 4.5 if they came from Institution 1 (38 papers) p = 0.001, published on breast (50 papers) p < 0.001 or upper gastrointestinal topics (35 papers) p < 0.001, or published on bench research (76 papers) p < 0.001. Publications increased from the first half of the decade to the second, with the largest increases seen in Institution 1 (40-89), Institution 4 (21-42) and Institution 6 (11-37).

Ireland continues to produce high quality surgical research, characterised by number of articles produced per 10⁶ inhabitants. This study shows that the number of articles published in the second half of the decade almost doubled from 221 to 369 and that the mean journal impact factor for all articles published was 2.87.