Bibliometric review of references of nursing research papers during the decade 1994-2003 in Turkey.

AIM: To identify important information on the state of academic nursing and the characteristics of academic nursing publications in Turkey.

METHODS: The study consists of retrospective bibliometric research. The selected sample of the research consisted of six Turkish nursing journals published between 1994-2003 from a total population of ten journals. Seventy-four issues of these six journals were included and 825 research papers were analysed. A series of classic bibliometric indexes were used.

RESULTS: The average number of references per scientific paper is 16.19 [+/-standard deviation (SD) 8.56]. The changes in the number of references taken from journals over time do not show strong fluctuations but were statistically significant (P < 0.001). The average number of references per paper is 17.71 (+/-SD 8.09) for research papers, while it is 14.50 (+/-SD 8.76) for reviews. The Price's index is 23.8% and the insularity index is 31.8%.

CONCLUSIONS: The number of references used for papers has been increasing in recent years. The use of journals within references is high while the use of books is low. The Price's index tendency is decreasing. The high insularity index observed in the articles may be considered as a negative indicator of nursing journals in Turkey.