Reimagining policy visibility: Bibliometric analysis of core nursing journals

Abstract

Background: Providing nurses with knowledge about policy enhances their involvement in policymaking. Policy inclusion in editorial guidelines has yet to be examined.

Purpose: Describe how peer-reviewed nurse journals' editorial information communicates policy expectations to readers and authors and then to describe policy in articles published in those journals.

Methods: Using a list of nursing journals indexed in CINAHL, we analyzed each journal's author guidelines and key attributes. Journals that addressed policy guidelines were examined for articles that denoted policy as the subject focus, and the research team descriptively analyzed those articles.

Findings: Only half the journals included policy as a focus (aim, scope, or description), author guidelines, or column. Within this subset of journals, only 267 articles published in 2022 out of 4,805 (5.6%) had policy as a subject focus.

Discussion: Consistently and regularly addressing policy in nursing journals may facilitate nurse authors' dissemination and reader awareness about policy.

Keywords: Advocacy; Author guidelines; Bibliometric; Editorial policies; Health policy; Nursing.