TITLE:
A Bibliometric Analysis of Evolution of Global and Chinese Nursing Scientific Publications
AUTHORS:
Qiu Ma, Aoli Li, Qilian He, Kunli Wu
KEYWORDS:
Bibliometrics, Journal Citation Reports, Nursing Research, Publication
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.11 No.10,
October
31,
2023
ABSTRACT: Aim: To analyze the nursing publications from Mainland China (ML), Taiwan (TW), and Hong Kong (HK) with comparison to the latest global nursing scientific productivity trend. Methods: A comparative bibliometric analysis based on nursing publications cited from 2016 to 2021 in the Web of Science was conducted: the global nursing research productivity and focus were explored. The number of nursing publications, impact factors, citation report, research focus and funding support were analyzed according to the articles retrieved from ML, TW, and HK. Results: A total of 44,654 articles were published in the 122 nursing journals globally with different research focuses. USA and Australia have stayed at the top 2 during all 5 years; China firstly passed the UK to the 3rd place in 2019. Different from the results of previous studies, our study firstly discovered that the number of publications in ML has surpassed that of TW for the very first time in 2018 and arrived at 1.46 times in 2019, while it exceeded HK with 2.17 times in 2015 and reached to around 3 times since 2016. The different trends in the most used keywords and most popular journals in three Chinese regions and worldwide may indicate different research interests and phenomenon focused by nursing researchers, which may have implications for nursing policy analysis. Conclusions: Bibliometric analysis revealed embedded values of nursing scientific activity, and provided evidence for the policy changes in nursing research, education, and practices. Chinese researchers’ contribution to the global nursing field has increased significantly. The quality and quantity of nursing publications from ML firstly stayed at the 1st among Chinese three regions since 2017 and 2018 respectively. The fast development of nursing education and practice, broadened international collaboration, more funding of nursing research, higher publication requirements for career development were likely the main factors of the improvement of ML. Those trends could help China, especially the ML constructed better nursing research policy framework, and be more contributing to the global nursing scientific field.