The use of bibliometrics in nursing science: Topics, data sources and contributions to research and practice

Aim: To describe the use of bibliometrics in nursing and assess their contribution to research and practice. Design: A content analysis was conducted of topics, data sources and applications of bibliometrics in nursing research articles. Methods: The study universe included 129 bibliometric articles on nursing retrieved from Scopus. A content analysis was performed to identify the purposes and topics of the articles, the sources employed to collect the data, the time frames covered, the amounts of records surveyed, and the features of the nursing literature analysed in bibliometric papers. Results: Nursing bibliometric research revolves around six key areas: global descriptions of the nursing literature, literature on specific nursing research topics, nursing education, nursing profession, nursing research using a certain framework or method, and nursing literature published in a country or region. Studies rely on three types of sources to retrieve the surveyed literature: bibliographic databases, sets of disciplinary journals and samples of documents. Bibliometrics can be employed to advance nursing research (identification of research gaps, establishment of research agendas, assessment of methodological approaches, etc.) and practice (identification of professional competences, categorisation of professional tasks, recognition of educational improvements, etc.), suggesting new avenues for researchers who aim to conduct further bibliometric research in the field. Further research is needed to assess the coverage of the nursing literature by new bibliographic data sources and to explore unaddressed topics such as gender imbalance in authorship.