Hat-trick of success for Professor Paul Glasziou

Professor Paul Glasziou, Director of Bond University's Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare, has again been named in a prestigious international list of medical researchers. 

The Director of Bond University’s Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare (IEBH), Professor Paul Glasziou, has for the third successive year been named in a prestigious international list of medical researchers.

Professor Glasziou once again appeared in Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers list, which identifies researchers who demonstrated significant influence in their chosen field or fields through the publication of multiple highly-cited papers in the past decade. 

While pleased with the recognition, Professor Glasziou was more concerned that his research was making a difference.

“It’s nice because it tells you that at least somebody is reading the papers enough to cite them, that’s one form of impact, but what I’m really interested in is that that goes on to have a real impact on health policy and clinical guidelines.

“If you write something and nobody ever reads it or never cites it, then it’s unlikely to have any impact at all, but you can get a highly-cited paper that is controversial for some reason but never makes a difference in practice. So, the question is if the highly-cited stuff goes on to make some change at policy levels or clinical guideline levels or clinical action levels, and that’s what I’m really interested in.”

Professor Glasziou’s current research priorities continue to focus on the four main problems targeted by the IEBH: antibiotic resistance, underuse of non-drug interventions, degree of overdiagnosis, and waste in research.

“There was a series in The Lancet we did on the overuse and underuse of medical treatment around the world that has been a very highly-cited series with a couple of hundred citations for each of the papers,” he said.

Another series on waste in research had not only been highly-cited but was having a real-world impact as funders were now trying to do something about the problems it identified.  

Professor Glasziou also acknowledged the efforts of his colleagues at the IEBH and his research collaborators around the world.

“I would say roughly half the papers are work that I do with the team here at the institute, and so they need to be recognised, I’m often not the lead author on them, and half the papers I do are with external groups in a number of places and very good groups I’ve worked with over the years in Sydney, England and other places, that led to those highly-cited papers as well.”

Before coming to Bond, Professor Glasziou was Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in Oxford from 2003 to 2010.

In all, 6167 researchers from more than 60 countries and regions were recognised in this year’s Highly Cited Researchers list. The United States had the most Highly Cited Researchers (2650), with Harvard University home to the highest concentration of Highly Cited Researchers, with 188.

This year’s list showed Australian research institutes continuing to punch above their weight, with 305 Australian researchers recognised. The list also included 26 Nobel laureates.