Photoemission spectroscopy offers the unique possibility of mapping out the electronic structure of the occupied electron states. However, the extreme surface sensitivity of this technique ensures that only the surface and the near-surface regions of any sample are probed. An important question arises in this context-Is the electronic structure of the surface region the same as that of the bulk? We address this issue using two different series of vanadium oxides, Ca1-xSrxVO3 and La1-xCaxVO3. Our results clearly establish that the electronic structure of the surface region is drastically different from that of the bulk in both these cases. We provide a method to separate the two contributions: one arising from the near-surface region and the other representative of the bulk. This separation allows us to deduce some very unusual behaviors of the electronic structures in these systems. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.