Global nursing research activity from 2009 to 2020: A bibliometric analysis

Aim: Bibliometric analysis of the nursing literature can provide insights into the current state and dynamics of the nursing profession. This study aimed to assess global nursing-related research activity from 2009 to 2020.

Method: The corpus of nursing papers was harvested from the Web of Science Core Collection database. The bibliometric indicators and VOSviewer mapping of the retrieved papers were presented.

Results: The search found 109,782 papers, and 39.0% of papers reported funded studies. Publication numbers were increasing. The USA was the most prolific country in literature production and international collaboration in nursing studies. International cooperation in nursing research was dominated by developed regions. Among the 20 most cited articles, 75% were published in first quartile journals, and review papers received a higher number of citations than original research articles. Author keyword analysis identified 'quality of life', 'mental health', 'nursing students' education' and 'adolescent' as common nursing focus topics.

Conclusions: The publication trend of nursing papers was positive. However, several problems were associated with nursing research activity, including low research funding, regionally centred research activity and inactivity of developing regions in terms of international collaborations, which need to be addressed by policy makers, nursing managers and scholars.