J Nurs Manag. 2020 May 27.
OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to assess the overall trends in the development and impact of high-impact papers in nursing research worldwide to gain insight into the focus areas of nursing research.
BACKGROUND: Bibliometric method is proved to be effective in analyzing the papers' characteristics, and it gained considerable interest from the scientific community in recent years. An analysis of the characteristics and intrinsic patterns of high-impact papers in nursing research will provide an objective reflection of the research hotspots. Nursing managers can pointedly increase funding amount and strength research cooperation in order to put the scientific results into management practice.
METHODS: Bibliometric methods and visualization software were used to comprehensively analyze high-impact papers in nursing research in terms of development trends, countries/regions, distribution of subject areas, research institutes, collaboration networks, and subject terms.
RESULTS: There were 6,886 papers between 2008 and 2018. The number of papers increased from 528 in 2008 to 723 in 2015, and then remained above 600 in 2016 and 2017. These papers were mainly distributed in nursing, oncology, pediatrics, gynecology, teaching and education, and cardiac and cardiovascular systems and were cited by 128,845 papers that came from 89 Web of Science subject areas. Papers in nursing research accounted for the largest share of these citations. The top five countries in the world in terms of the number of high-impact papers were the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Sweden. The research institutions with the highest number of high-impact papers worldwide were the University of California System, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of North Carolina, the University of London, and the University of Technology Sydney. In this dataset, it was shown that research collaboration circles have been formed in the United States, Australia, Canada, and Europe; The subject-term analysis indicated that "women" and "students" have always been high-interest populations for high-impact papers, and that cancer is still one of the greatest threats to human health. Furthermore, the subject terms of high-impact papers in nursing research have gradually evolved from "disease" and "therapy" to "symptom."
CONCLUSION: In recent years, the number of high-impact papers published each year in nursing research has grown over time. Nursing has been shown to be a highly specialized subject, and the majority of its high-impact papers have been published by research institutions. Although cross-regional collaborations are beginning to emerge, there is much room for improvement in this regard. Finally, women, students, cancer, and symptomatic care are the current focus areas in nursing research.
Keywords: Web of Science; bibliometrics; high-impact papers; nursing research; scientific outputs; visual analysis