How does nursing research differ internationally? A bibliometric analysis of six countries

Abstract

Background: International nursing research comparisons can give a new perspective on a nation’s output by identifying strengths and weaknesses. Aim: This article compares strengths in nursing research between six mainly English-speaking nations (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and United States). Methods: Journal authorship (percentage first authorship by nationality) and article keywords were compared for Scopus-indexed journal articles 2008-18. Three natural language processing strategies were assessed for identifying statistically significant international differences in the use of key words or phrases. Results: Journal author nationality was not a good indicator of international differences in research specialisms, but key word and phrase differences were more promising especially if both are used. For this, the Part Of Speech tagging and Lemmatisation text processing strategies were helpful but not Named Entity Recognition. The results highlight aspects of nursing research that were absent in some countries, such as papers about nursing administration and management. Conclusion: Researchers outside the USA should consider the importance of researching specific patient groups, diseases, treatments, skills, research methods, and social perspectives for unresearched gaps with national relevance. From a methods perspective, key word and phrase differences are useful to reveal international differences in nursing research topics.