Bibliometrics, citation indexing, and the journals of nursing

A Bibliometric Analysis of Publication Patterns in Pediatric Neurology

PURPOSE

To examine the publication patterns of pediatric neurology articles in general pediatric, general neurology, and neurology subspecialty journals using a bibliometric approach.

METHODS

The top 5 journals in general pediatrics, general neurology and neurology subspecialties were identified using the 2017 Journal Citations Report (JCR). For general pediatric journals, we selected 4 pediatric subspecialties for comparison of publication patterns with neurology: immunology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, and respirology. For general neurology and neurology subspecialty journals, we searched both the top 5 neurology and neurology subspecialty journals for pediatric articles. Using Ovid Medline, we identified articles published between 2009-2017.

RESULTS

With regards to child neurology-based articles, 1501 were published in general pediatrics journals, 643 in general neurology journals and 685 in neurology subspecialty journals. Examination of the top pediatric journals revealed that Pediatrics published the most neurology-based articles. Neurology-based studies were published more frequently than other pediatric subspecialty studies. Of the top general neurology Neurology published the most child neurology-based articles, while Epilepsia published the most child neurology-based articles out of neurology subspecialty journals. Cohort studies were the most frequent study type across all journals.

CONCLUSION

Our study revealed that child neurology articles are published more often in pediatric journals as opposed to general neurology and neurology subspecialty journals. We also found that in general pediatric journals, neurology-based articles are published more frequently compared to other specialties. Our results provide guidance to authors when considering submission of their pediatric neurology research.

Bibliometric Analysis of Neurology Articles Published in General Medicine Journals

IMPORTANCE

A significant portion of neurology literature is published in general medicine journals. Despite this, a detailed examination of publication patterns of neurology articles in these journals has not yet been carried out.

OBJECTIVE

To examine the publication patterns of neurology articles in general medicine journals during a 10-year period using a bibliometric approach.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS

This cross-sectional bibliometric analysis identified the top 5 general medicine journals using the 2017 Journal Citations Report. Four other medical subspecialties (ie, immunology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, and pulmonology) were selected for comparison of publication patterns with neurology. Using MEDLINE, the 5 journals were searched for articles published between 2009 and 2018 that were indexed with the following MeSH terms: nervous system diseases, immune system diseases, endocrine system diseases, gastrointestinal diseases, and respiratory tract diseases. Data analysis was conducted from February 2019 to December 2020.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES

Publications were characterized by journal, specialty, and study design. These variables were used for comparison of publication numbers.

RESULTS

The general medicine journals with the 5 highest journal impact factors (JIF) were New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM; JIF 79.3), Lancet (JIF 53.3), JAMA (JIF 47.7), BMJ (JIF 23.6), and PLOS Medicine (JIF 11.7). Our bibliometric search yielded 3719 publications, of which 1098 (29.5%) were in neurology. Of these 1098 neurology publications, 317 (28.9%) were published in NEJM, 205 (18.7%) in Lancet, 284 (25.9%) in JAMA, 214 (19.5%) in BMJ, and 78 (7.1%) in PLOS Medicine. Randomized clinical trials were the most frequent neurology study type in general medicine journals (519 [47.3%]). The number of publications in each of the other specialties were as follows: immunology, 817; endocrinology, 633; gastroenterology, 353; and pulmonology, 818.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE

The results of this study provide some guidance to authors regarding where they may wish to consider submitting their neurology research. Compared with other specialties, neurology-based articles are published more frequently in general medicine journals.

Contribution of Italian nursing professors to international Literature: 2000 - 2016 review

BACKGROUND

The purpose of the study was to assess Italian nurse academics' scientific activity by exploring their publications in international journals.

BACKGROUND

The scientific production of a discipline's academics is a requisite for the university accreditation process and for employment in academic positions. It can also be used as an indicator of the maturity and importance of a given discipline in a country. Italian nurse academics' scientific production has not been analyzed recently.

METHOD

Quantitative descriptive study on an observation period of 16 years, from 2000 to 2016.

METHODS

All Italian full-time academics in the sector of General, Clinical, and Pediatric Nursing Sciences were identified, based on selection criteria. All their publications in indexed international journals were systematically collected between November 2016 and February 2017.

FINDINGS

Twenty-five Italian nurse academics were identified, and 450 of their publications met all our inclusion criteria, with a mean of 18 publications per author (range 0-88). There was a steady growth in the number of publications over time. Sixty-five percent of articles were published in nursing journals. Eighty-six percent of the publications were on nursing topics, the most popular being clinical issues (53.8%). Eighty percent of the publications were "applied research articles" and most of them adopted a quantitative approach with a descriptive study design. Hospitals and clinics were the most common settings studied, while patients and caregivers were the participants most often involved. Foreign coauthors contributed to 30% of the articles.

DISCUSSION

Italian nursing academics contribute adequately to scientific production in the nursing sector.

Characterizing the literature on validity and assessment in medical education: a bibliometric study

INTRODUCTION

Assessment in Medical Education fills many roles and is under constant scrutiny. Assessments must be of good quality, and supported by validity evidence. Given the high-stakes consequences of assessment, and the many audiences within medical education (e. g., training level, specialty-specific), we set out to document the breadth, scope, and characteristics of the literature reporting on validation of assessments within medical education.

METHOD

Searches in Medline (Ovid), Web of Science, ERIC, EMBASE (Ovid), and PsycINFO (Ovid) identified articles reporting on assessment of learners in medical education published since 1999. Included articles were coded for geographic origin, journal, journal category, targeted assessment, and authors. A map of collaborations between prolific authors was generated.

RESULTS

A total of 2,863 articles were included. The majority of articles were from the United States, with Canada producing the most articles per medical school. Most articles were published in journals with medical categorizations (73.1% of articles), but Medical Education was the most represented journal (7.4% of articles). Articles reported on a variety of assessment tools and approaches, and 89 prolific authors were identified, with a total of 228 collaborative links.

DISCUSSION

Literature reporting on validation of assessments in medical education is heterogeneous. Literature is produced by a broad array of authors and collaborative networks, reported to a broad audience, and is primarily generated in North American and European contexts. Our findings speak to the heterogeneity of the medical education literature on assessment validation, and suggest that this heterogeneity may stem, at least in part, from differences in constructs measured, assessment purposes, or conceptualizations of validity.

Stress in nurses: The 100 top-cited papers published in nursing journals

AIM

To identify and analyse the 100 most cited papers on stress in nurses published in nursing journals.

BACKGROUND

The number of citations an article receives is an index of its impact on the scientific community. An analysis of the most cited articles on stress in nursing would allow us to identify the most important articles and to obtain information about this area of knowledge.

DESIGN

A retrospective bibliometric analysis.

DATA SOURCES

In 2016, 111 journals belonging to the "nursing" category were identified in the Science and Social Science Citation Index. A search was performed of the Science Core Collection Website for articles on stress published in these journals.

REVIEW METHODS

The topic, type of article, publishing journal, countries and institutions of origin and year of publication were extracted from the articles. The impact factor, immediacy index, journal country and publisher and h index were collected from the Institute for Scientific Information. The citation density, citation tendency and Bradford's law were calculated.

RESULTS

They identified articles were mostly empirical quantitative studies with a transversal design, published from 1975 - 2011 in 23 journals. They were signed by 233 authors, most of whom are English-speaking from the USA and UK. The core distribution of the publications comprises a single journal, the Journal of Advanced Nursing.

CONCLUSION

The study of stress in nursing has shown increased visibility and recognition each decade. The most recent articles have the highest number of citations, are the highest in rank and have the higher citation densities.

Slovenian Nursing Review facing contemporary publishing challenges

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Trends in nursing ethics research: Mapping the literature production

BACKGROUND

There have been a number of debates in the field of nursing ethics. Researchers have focused on various aspects of nursing ethics, such as professional ethics, professional, nursing and ethical values. Within this research, a variety of literature reviews have been conducted, but to the best of our knowledge, bibliometric mapping has not yet been used.

OBJECTIVE

This article aims to analyse the production of literature within nursing ethics research.

RESEARCH DESIGN

In order to examine publishing patterns, we focused on publishing dynamics, prolific research entities and the most-cited articles. We additionally visualised the content of the literature using a novel mixed-method approach, combining bibliometric analysis and mapping with thematic analysis. Ethical considerations: In our study, ethical review was not required.

FINDINGS

A total of 1416 information sources were found in the Scopus database. Overall, literature production has increased; however, in recent years, the quantity of published material has begun to decrease. The most prolific countries are the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, and the most prolific source titles are Nursing Ethics, Journal of Advanced Nursing and Nursing Times. Lately, research in the field of nursing ethics has been focused more on life care (providing for the basic needs of older residents), moral distress and community nursing.

DISCUSSION

The dynamics of research literature production showed an exponential rise in the number of published information sources - a rise which started in the period between 1974 and 1998. Since that period, the trend has stabilised, which might indicate that nursing ethics research is starting a transition to a mature phase.

CONCLUSION

The innovative use of bibliometric analysis and mapping, together with thematic analysis, is a useful tool for analysis of research production in the field of nursing ethics. The results presented can be an excellent starting point for literature reviews and more exhaustive data, information and knowledge seeking.

Research literature production on nursing competences from 1981 till 2012: A bibliometric snapshot

BACKGROUND

When nurse education has moved away from a hospital based apprenticeship to a higher education institutions and new EU legislature enabled nurse workforce mobility, the term "competence" became an important concept in nurse education and practice. However, there is still a lot of confusion about its definition, how it should be assessed and implemented and which competences does a contemporary nurse need.

OBJECTIVES

To find publishing patterns in the nursing competence research literature production, focusing on publishing dynamics, identifying prolific research entities, most cited papers, and visualising the content of the research.

DESIGN AND DATA SOURCES

A bibliometric analysis of 370 information sources (288 original papers and 82 review articles) found in the Scopus database using the search string "nursing competenc*" for the period 1981-2012 was conducted. The SciMago database was used to identify country and source title ranks.

METHODS

Common elements of bibliometric data were extracted from each information source. Descriptive, correspondence and text analyses were used on the retrieved bibliometric data.

RESULTS

The production of research literature has a positive trend. The research on nursing competences is being performed on all five continents, however is not yet published in top journals. Most prolific countries are the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Australasia, and most prolific source titles are the Journal of clinical nursing, the Journal of nursing education and Public health nursing. The results confirmed the still persisting confusion in the definition of the competence and the emergence of the need for defining new nursing competences.

CONCLUSIONS

Study confirmed that there are still open questions in the nursing competence research that will require actions on different levels including policy makers, educators and practising nurses.

A Scopus-based examination of tobacco use publications in Middle Eastern Arab countries during the period 2003-2012

BACKGROUND

Tobacco smoking is the main health-care problem in the world. Evaluation of scientific output in the field of tobacco use has been poorly explored in Middle Eastern Arab (MEA) countries to date, and there are few internationally published reports on research activity in tobacco use. The main objectives of this study were to analyse the research output originating from 13 MEA countries on tobacco fields and to examine the authorship pattern and the citations retrieved from the Scopus database.

METHODS

Data from 1 January 2003 through 31 December 2012 were searched for documents with specific words regarding the tobacco field as 'keywords' in the title in any 1 of the 13 MEA countries. Research productivity was evaluated based on a methodology developed and used in other bibliometric studies.

RESULTS

Five hundred documents were retrieved from 320 peer-reviewed journals. The greatest amount of research activity was from Egypt (25.4%), followed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) (23.2%), Lebanon (16.3%), and Jordan (14.8%). The total number of citations for the 560 documents, at the time of data analysis (27 August 2013), was 5,585, with a mean ± SD of 9.95 ± 22.64 and a median (interquartile range) of 3(1-10). The h-index of the retrieved documents was 34. This study identified 232 (41.4%) documents from 53 countries in MEA-foreign country collaborations. By region, MEA collaborated most often with countries in the Americas (29.6%), followed by countries in the same MEA region (13.4%), especially KSA and Egypt.

CONCLUSIONS

The present data reveal a promising rise and a good start for research productivity in the tobacco field in the Arab world. Research output is low in some countries, which can be improved by investing in more international and national collaborative research projects in the field of tobacco.

A bibliometric analysis of evaluative medical education studies: characteristics and indexing accuracy

PURPOSE

To determine the characteristics of medical education studies published in general and internal medicine (GIM) and medical education journals, and to analyze the accuracy of their indexing.

METHOD

The authors identified the five GIM and five medical education journals that published the most articles indexed in MEDLINE as medical education during January 2001 to January 2010. They searched Ovid MEDLINE for evaluative medical education studies published in these journals during this period and classified them as quantitative or qualitative studies according to MEDLINE indexing. They also examined themes and learner levels targeted. Using a random sample of records, they assessed the accuracy of study-type indexing.

RESULTS

Of 4,418 records retrieved, 3,853 (87.2%) were from medical education journals and 565 (12.3%) were from GIM journals. Qualitative studies and program evaluations were more prevalent within medical education journals, whereas GIM journals published a higher proportion of clinical trials and systematic reviews (χ=74.28, df=3, P<.001). Medical education journals had a concentration of studies targeting medical students, whereas GIM journals had a concentration targeting residents; themes were similar. The authors confirmed that 170 (56.7%) of the 300 sampled articles were correctly classified in MEDLINE as evaluative studies.

CONCLUSIONS

The majority of the identified evaluative studies were published in medical education journals, confirming the integrity of medical education as a specialty. Findings concerning the study types published in medical education versus GIM journals are important for medical education researchers who seek to publish outside the field's specialty journals.

Trends in publication of research papers by Australian-based nurse authors

Analysis of Australian nursing research output is becoming more important as academic institutions move into implementing quality programs of research output. Notable in determining research quality is the publication of research papers in journals with a high ranking within the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) or Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA). This paper reports an analysis of Australian nurse researcher output in journals highly ranked by the ISI and ERA. Research abstracts were analysed for topic, sources of data, location of research and methodological paradigm. A total of 530 articles from five Australian and from five USA and UK journals were analysed. There was an increase in output from the period of prior analyses in 2000. Practice issues are the most common topic followed closely by nurse education. While most studies used nurses as sources of data there were more studies in which consumers of nursing care were the point of inquiry. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were utilised. Given the importance of rationalising nursing practice and adding new knowledge to evidence based care, it is imperative for the nursing profession to disseminate research findings. Failure to do this may result in poor return in investment outcomes for the future of nursing in Australia and internationally.

Can the global uptake of palliative care innovations be improved? Insights from a bibliometric analysis of the Edmonton Symptom Assessment System

Clinical research is undertaken to improve care for palliative patients, but little is known about how to support the broad uptake of resultant innovations. The objectives of this paper are to: (1) explore the uptake of the Edmonton Symptom Assessment System throughout the global palliative care community through the lens of a bibliometric review - a research method that maps out the journey of new knowledge uptake by evaluating where key articles are cited in published literature; (2) construct hypotheses on attributes of the global community of palliative care learners; and (3) make inferences on approaches that could improve knowledge transfer. While preliminary, results of the study suggest several specific approaches that could support widespread uptake of innovations in palliative care: targeting publication in high impact, international journals; explicitly focusing on how the innovation is applied to best practice; encouraging additional research to expand on early studies; consciously targeting key professional groups and organizations to promote discussion in the grey literature; and early translation and promotion within multiple languages.

Legitimizing basic research by evaluating quality

The aim of this study was to use ethical arguments to strengthen the relationship between the concepts of legitimacy and evaluation. The analysis is based on the ethics of Levinas and Buber and is motivated by a sense of responsibility using dialogical ideology as a mediator. The main questions in this study consider the following: Does caring science as an independent academic discipline have the moral responsibility to develop a theory for evaluating the quality of basic research? and Will such a quality evaluation theory have a reasonable probability of introducing legitimization into caring science? On an ethical level, this study introduces a meaningful interaction inspired by social demands and is linked to the concept of research justification. Legitimization turns from an abstract idea to an achievable entity by an act. The act of evaluation has the likelihood of delegating legitimacy and empowers the foundation of caring science, which in turn will become a cornerstone of nursing. At this stage there is no intention to develop an evaluation theory, rather to create a meaningful discussion for the future development of an ethics-based theory.

Highly cited articles in environmental and occupational health, 1919-1960

Although numerous lists of "citation classics" have been compiled across a variety of scientific fields, few have included articles from environmental and occupational health (EOH). This investigation sought to identify and analyze the most highly cited articles ever published in the Journal of Industrial Hygiene (1919-1935), the Journal of Industrial Hygiene and Toxicology (1936-1949), the Archives of Industrial Hygiene and Occupational Medicine (1950), the American Medical Association (A.M.A.) Archives of Industrial Hygiene and Occupational Medicine (1950-1954), and the A.M.A. Archives of Industrial Health (1955-1960). Regularly cited topics included metal fume fever and various studies of beryllium, whereas the most highly cited article of all was a 1957 paper describing the control of heat casualties at military training centers. Interestingly, the most highly cited articles were not the oldest, and nor were they written as literature reviews. Overall, this study suggests that although some citation patterns in EOH reflect those of other disciplines, the trend is not uniform and EOH itself appears to have some distinctive bibliometric characteristics.