Citation analysis of the maternal/child nursing literature

Few bibliometric studies have been done of the nursing literature; however, much can be learned about nursing and specialty areas of clinical practice by examining the articles published in nursing journals. The purposes of this study were to describe the extent of research, clinical, and evidence-based practice articles published in maternal/child nursing journals and the information sources used to develop that literature. A total of 112 articles and 2571 citations from three randomly selected maternal/child nursing journals were analyzed. Nearly half (n=51, 46%) of all articles were reports of original research studies. Research publications were cited most frequently including research studies published in medical journals (n=687, 26.7% of all the cited documents), followed by research studies published in nursing journals (n=371, 14.4%) and journals in other disciplines. The maternal/child nursing journals examined in this study are disseminating research findings to nurses for use in clinical practice.