[Developments of nursing research within German-speaking countries - publications from 1988 until 2007 in the journal...

"Pflege" is the nursing research journal with the largest circulation in the German-speaking area and has been nursing research experts' only communication platform for a considerable time. Analysing the structure of articles aims to focus on development and alteration of the German-speaking region's nursing research. The study consists of a retrospective analysis of publications in the nursing research journal "Pflege". 589 articles from 1988 until 2007 could be included into the analysis. Research questions refer to the amount of empirical studies and the study designs in quantitative projects. Almost 50 % of all publications of the "Pflege" represent results of empirical research; the remaining publications come from "other publications" and increasingly literature reviews. Research designs are mainly simple cross-sectional surveys; only 20 % are intervention studies (including five randomised controlled trials). The importance of intervention studies will increase in future. This development cannot be seen in the "Pflege". There is a need for further bibliometric analysis to be conducted to find out whether German-speaking nurse researchers actually seldom conduct intervention studies, or whether they prefer to publish in journals with a high impact factor.