Nursing research in three regions in China: a bibliometric study

To analyse scientific papers published by Chinese authors in nursing journals included in the Science Citation Index Expanded and compare the published scientific papers from mainland China (ML), Taiwan (TW) and Hong Kong (HK).

All articles published in 62 journals that were related to nursing originating from ML, TW and HK from 1999 to 2008 were retrieved from the PubMed and Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Knowledge database. The total number of articles published in nursing journals, impact factors and citation reports and articles were estimated for quantity and quality comparisons.

The number of articles from the three regions increased significantly from 1999 to 2008. There were 1015 articles in total from the three regions: ML (48), HK (414) and TW (553) in PubMed. In the ISI Web of Knowledge database, TW derived the highest total citations (1755 citations from 500 articles), followed by HK (1316 citations from 347 articles) and ML (158 citations from 55 articles). HK had the highest average citations of 3.79, followed by TW (3.51) and then ML (2.87).

The difference between the quantity and quality of nursing research articles published in ML, TW and HK is significant, although the gap appears to be narrowing. Long-term job stresses, low levels of education and language barriers are likely the main factors. ML, TW and HK have the same culture and ethnicity. We expect that ML will benefit significantly from increased exchanges with TW and HK in nursing research and education. We also speculate that TW and HK will benefit from exchanges because ML may have diverse nursing problems.