Historical, descriptive and exploratory analysis of application of bibliometrics in nursing research

Abstract

Objective: The aim of the study was to analyse the literature production on application of bibliometrics in nursing research.

Methods: Historical, descriptive, and exploratory bibliometrics analyses were used. The papers were harvested from the Scopus bibliographical database (Elsevier, Maribor, Netherlands), on November 18th, 2018, using the search string bibliometric* in publication titles, abstracts, and keywords, limited to the subject of nursing, for the period 1970 to 2018.

Findings: The search resulted in 531 publications with 18 publications removed after manual inspection of publications abstracts. The literature production trend was positive. The nursing specific historical roots appeared only recently. The United States of America and Spain were the most productive countries, and most papers were published in Nutricion Hospitalaria and the Journal of Advanced Nursing. Descriptive analysis, research evaluation, content analysis, citation analyses, and trend analysis in nursing research were the most prolific themes.

Conclusions: Applications of bibliometric in nursing is comparable to bibliometrics use in general, however there are some gaps including the use of altmetrics and of Big Data analysis.

Keywords: Bibliometrics; Historical roots; Nursing research; Papers as topics; Thematic analysis.