ABSTRACT Background The purpose of this study was to undertake a bibliographic analysis of foot and lower leg research relating to paediatric podiatry by Australian or affiliated Australian authors. Methods The Scopus database search was conducted to identify all foot and lower limb research articles involving an Australian cohort of participants, published by Australian authors, or those affiliated with Australian institutions, pertaining to paediatric podiatry, in English from 1970 to 2024. We used bibliometric analysis through an open‐source tool based on the R language. We described citations, journals, authors and institutions; countries and publications were manually categorised according to research type, level of evidence and funding source. Results The search strategy yielded 280 eligible articles, which received a total of 8331 citations and were published by 793 authors in 104 journals. The most frequent journal was Gait 12%), and the most published institution was the University of Sydney (170 affiliations). Most of the Australian paediatric articles published focused on detection, screening and diagnosis ( n = 70, 25%) and only 33 articles (12%) provided Level I evidence. Seventy‐three paediatric articles (25%) received Category 1 funding; 154 articles (55%) reported no research funding. Conclusion Paediatric podiatry research represents 17% of Australian foot and lower limb research. Despite the smaller population base, paediatric research attracts a high level of engagement, moderate citation rates and low funding rates when compared to adult population studies. Paediatric podiatry research is primarily produced via Level 3 evidence. This highlights the need for an increase in the robustness of research methodologies in paediatric podiatry research to strengthen the quality and applicability of evidence informing clinical care for children and adolescent populations.
Banwell et al. (2026) studied this question.