Nurse academics' scholarly productivity: framed by the system, facilitated by mentoring

The scholarly productivity of 65% of the 1,107 nurse academics employed full-time in Australian faculties of nursing and health sciences was investigated by means of a survey. This report describes respondents' demographic profile, the categories of their publications, their scholarship index ratings and the factors that framed (i.e. constrained) and facilitated their efforts to publish their work. The study found that overall the academics had a low level of scholarly productivity and that the scholarship of three quarters of those who had published in the year prior to the survey was not rated highly according to the university value system. Respondents' opportunities to publish were framed by job factors such as teaching commitments and the need to improve their academic qualifications and they were facilitated by mentoring, professional development leave and participating in research. The implications of the study are that there is an urgent need for nursing mentorship programs, increased access to professional development leave and encouragement to undertake research, the facilitators of the scholarly productivity which is the foundation of the discipline's body of knowledge.