Content analysis of articles published in Iranian scientific nursing journals from 2009 through 2011

Little is known about the features of Iranian nursing journals, specifically the subject areas used in articles, study designs, sampling methods, international collaboration of Iranian nursing scholars, specialty and academic rank of authors, and the most frequently contributing academic institutions in articles.

The aim of this study was to analyze the content of the articles published in Iranian scientific nursing journals.

Quantitative content analysis was implemented to study Iranian nursing journals, which were approved by the commission for accreditation and improvement of Iranian medical journals in 2011. Thus, 763 articles from six journals, published from 2009 through 2011, were investigated. Data were extracted from the abstracts and when necessary, from the full-text of articles by visiting the websites of these journals. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data.

The main subjects of published articles in Iranian scientific nursing journals were consecutively renal dialysis (n = 21), intensive care unit (n = 16), nursing education (n = 15), patient satisfaction (n = 13), quality of life (n = 12), health education (n = 11), patient education (n = 11), pain (n = 10), and education (n = 9). The majority of authors had nursing and midwifery specialty (52.59%) followed by epidemiology/biostatistics specialty (7.72%). Isfahan, Tehran, Shahid Beheshti, Iran, Baqiyatallah, and Urmia universities of medical sciences had consecutively the largest number of publications in the studied journals. Only three papers (0.39%) were published by the international collaboration.

Iranian nursing journals should publish special issues in the neglected subject areas. These journals should encourage authors to publish research evidence with higher quality.