Australian Podiatry Research in Rheumatology: A Bibliometric Analysis

To conduct a bibliographic analysis of English language foot and ankle research pertaining to rheumatology published by Australian authors.

The Scopus database search was conducted to identify all Australian rheumatology articles published by podiatric authors in English from 1970 to 2024. Bibliometric analysis was performed using an open-source tool based on the R language. Citations, journals, authors, institutions and countries were described. Publications were manually categorised according to research type, level of evidence and funding source.

The search strategy yielded 89 eligible articles, which received a total of 2438 citations and were published by 200 authors. The most frequent journals were Arthritis Care & Research and Osteoarthritis and Cartilage each with 9 articles or 10% of total publications. The most published institution was La Trobe University (affiliation of 151 authors). Most of the Australian rheumatology articles focused on the evaluation of treatments and therapeutic interventions (n = 35; 39%) and 11 articles (12%) provided Level I evidence. Forty-two publications (47%) were supported by Category 1 funding, however, 29 (33%) reported no research funding.

Rheumatology represents just 5% of Australian podiatry research. Despite this, it attracts high citation rates relative to number of publications and is well supported by Category 1 funding in comparison to other research fields. Funding sources outside of competitive Category 1 grants appear to be limited however, and research scope is narrow with a high number of evaluative studies conducted. Rheumatology research would benefit from an increase in available funding sources and a broader research scope that informs disease prevention and evidence-based clinical care.