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Abstract

Objective: To analyse the scientific production poured into the journal "Metas de Enfermería" , since it was first introduced in the market (1998) up to the present time, determining the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the articles.
Material and method:  A bibliometric, descriptive, longitudinal and retrospective analysis was conducted for a 5-year period (1998-2002). The population object of study was composed of all articles published in the journal from its introduction in the editorial market. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to study productivity and collaboration and to conduct an analysis on the subject, respectively. A previously agreed upon and standardised manual revision was carried out as a technique for data retrieval. Descriptive statistics and Statistical Inference indexes (Chisquare and simple linear regression analysis) were used for quantitative analysis. The data were processed using the SPSS 10.0 statistical package.
Results: The average number of articles published per issue was 9.2 (SD: 1.02), with a tendency towards an increase (r=0.81, p=0.000). 30% of authors were from the hospital setting. The autonomous region with the highest production output was Madrid (44.6%). 46.2% of the articles were undersigned by one single author. The overall collaboration rate was 2.37, which steadily increased over the five years of study.  The area of knowledge most widely written about was Medical-Surgical Nursing (30.3%); by another hand, a 21.6% were research articles (this articles have increased significantly over the period under study).
Conclusions: The increase in the number of articles, especially research papers, as well as the increased rate of collaboration, shows that the quality of the journal under analysis is good, with an steady improvement over the 5 years since it was first released in the market. On the other hand, there is still a rather high percentage of papers undersigned by one single author, which, in a way, appears to indicate a rather artesian scientific practice. 

Introduction

    The communication of the scientific information represents an essential feature of modern science; Ortega y Gasset, in his work La misión de la Universidad¹  (The Mission of University) asserted that a "statistical study of ideas" is necessary to let us know when they emerged, the period through which they spread out and came into force, and the moment they began to come in decline. In order to carry on the development of scientific knowledge is crucial to disseminate the discoveries of science; undoubtedly, the periodical publications are the vehicle par excellence to carry out this activity. Nowadays, the periodical publications are the most widely used source of information in any discipline, since it is on them where the most recent contents are included, and they allow any professional to be constantly updated in order to develop a high-quality qualified practice.
     Scientific literature has grown exponentially during the last years, as described in 1956 by Price (quoted by López López P)² . We will take Medline database as an example; this database was started in 1966 and produced by the National Library of Medicine. It contains up to 12 million entries, and indexes more than 520.000 references per year; more specialized in the nursing discipline is CINAHL database, that displays more than 800.000 entries and indexes more than 80.000 new references annually³.  Nowadays, Medline database stores up nearly 32.000 journals indexes⁴,  and CINAHL database up to 1200⁵.  The situation in Spain is clearly a different one; a study on the publications on Nursing in Spain throughout the last 22 years developed by Gálvez Toro⁶  shows that only 59 out of the 90 publications collected in the Electronic Catalogue of Periodical Publications of Index Foundation are still alive. It is worth mentioning that this Foundation, born in 1994, is, nowadays the most important organization in favouring the diffusion of nursing scientific production in Spain⁷.
     Among other questions, bibliometrical analyses allow us to evaluate the quality of scientific journals and to determine the state of any question in the frame of a discipline. These analyses are relatively recent in the nursing science, since they commenced a little more then a decade ago; studies relating to concrete areas of nursing science have been carried out, like the one developed by Barreda and cols⁸ on the maternal-infant area or the one carried out by Asiaín and Marín⁹, focused on intensive nursing. Studies on scientific nursing production have also been published in most widely spread journals; we can mention the one developed by Torra i Bou¹⁰,  that analyses three nursing publications during the three-year period 1991-1993.
     Basing their study on the analysis of references and quotations, Gálvez Toro and cols.^11,12, conclude that nurses consult very few nursing journals before writing up their articles.
     The current study intends to analyse the scientific production poured into the journal "Metas de Enfermería", since it was first released in the market (1998) up to the present time, determining the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the articles. The journal "Metas de Enfermería" is a periodical publication of scientific an generalist character, that is, it can stir up the interest of nurses who work in a teaching institution, giving medical care, in research and administration. According to the Oficina para la Justificación de la Difusión (Office for the Justification of Diffusion), OJD, the journal has a circulation of 17.000 copies (Source: Oficina para la Justificación de la Difusion, (OJD); Acta de Control). Since the moment of the appearance of this journal in the publishing market, no assessment from the documentary point of view has been undertaken. Since any consideration of improvement in the quality of the journal has to derive from such assessment, the current study is fully justified.

Methodology

     A bibliometric, descriptive, longitudinal and retrospective analysis was conducted for a 5-year period (1998-2002). The population object of study was composed of all articles published in the journal from its introduction in the editorial market. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to study productivity and collaboration and to conduct an analysis of the subject.² The researchers carried out a manual revision of all the published articles as a technique for data retrieval; they had previously agreed upon and standardised the revision methods and variables to be determined for each of the unities of analysis (article).
     From the point of view of quantitative methods, the dimensions under study with their respective variables were the following:

Productivity:
     - Total number of articles
     - Productivity regarding the professional area of the authors of the articles (hospital, administrative, teaching, research or a mixture of them)
     - Productivity depending on the geographical area (Spanish Autonomous Regions) to which the article is related.

Collaboration:
     - Articles signed by a unique author and signed by co-authors.
     - Total number of authorships per article (index of collaboration).

     Regarding qualitative methods, the dimensions under study, along with their respective variables, were as follows:

Thematic area: a subject categorization (area of knowledge within the nursing discipline)¹³ that covered the following categories: History and Nursing Fundamentals (including Nursing Methodology); Ethics and Legislation; Psycho-social Nursing, Mental Health and Psychiatric Nursing; Human Ecology and Community Nursing: includes Bio-statistics, Demography, Microbiology and Public Health, Pharmacology, Nutrition and Dietetics; Basic Care and Medical-Surgical Nursing (EMQ): this will include all those articles dealing with techniques and procedures; Maternal-Infant Nursing; Geriatrics and Gerontology; Administration of health services; Other subjects.

Nature of the article: the external scientific structure of the articles was subjected to the study, together with their conceptual and methodological features. The documents were classified into the following categories:
     - Research articles
     - Revision articles
     - Articles on technological applications: techniques and procedures, proposals on programs and protocol, clinical cases, nursing interventions.
     - Opinion articles: letters to the editor, leading articles, interviews, experiences and stories, reflections and analyses from a professional viewpoint.
     For the quantitative analysis of data, indexes of descriptive statistics were used, such as mean, standard deviation, percentages, etc. Regarding statistical inference, it was carried out a bi-variant analysis (using the Chi-square test) of the aforementioned variables and the amount of time (period under study), aiming to analyse this tendency. A simple lineal regression analysis was executed, taking the total number of articles as dependent variable and the number of years of the study as independent variable. The data were processed using the SPSS 10.0 statistical package.

Results and discussion

Productivity: up to the last issue belonging to the year 2002, 458 articles had been published with an average number of 9,2 articles (Standard Deviation: 1,02) published per issue. The analysis of simple linear regression developed using the number of articles and the period of time under study revealed the existence of a tendency towards an increase in the number of articles per year. This trend fits the straight line equation as appearing in Chart 1 and allows to make an estimation of, for example, 107 articles for the year 2004 (Pearson's coefficient, that was obtained from these two variables: number of articles per year and year of the production of the article, was 0,818 -p= 0,000-, which shows evidence of a high correlation).
     Regarding the professional field of the authors that signed the articles, 30% (n=128) came from a hospital setting and 27,5% (n=117) from an educational setting. Although they lacked a statistical association, the authors coming from a hospital setting and those works signed by authors coming from several settings (table 1), kept up increasing during the 5 years under study. Other studies, those belonging to the setting of health science^14-16 and those regarding other sciences,¹⁷ have revealed different percentages, being usually more frequent the authorship by professionals related to school and university. This difference can be partly explained because of the generalist nature of the journal and its rather applied character more than researching character.
     The autonomous region of Spain that showed the highest production output was Madrid (44,4%, n=203) followed up by Catalonia (12,7%, n=58) and Andalusia (11,2%, n=51). It is worth mentioning that 2,3%, (n=12) came from an international scope. (Table 2). Although no significant changes have occurred throughout the 5 years, Madrid is losing prominence due to the increase in the production of other Spanish autonomous regions. In general, other studies lead to the same results.^14,17,18  Madrid tends to be the autonomous region that takes up the highest number of publications. The studies consulted did not carry out analyses of trend, so events occurred in the journal Metas de Enfermería cannot be compared; anyway, it seems reasonable to consider that this tendency towards a decentralization of knowledge must be regarded as normal in a developed society and under the concept of modern science.

Collaboration: 46% of the articles were signed by one single author (Table 3). Despite the non-existence of association with statistical significance, throughout the period subject to study, the number of articles signed by 2-3 authors has increased gradually (24,7% in 1998; 36,8% in 2002), just like the articles signed by more than 3 authors (18,8% in 1998, 24,2% in 2002). The overall collaboration rate was 2,37, which steadily increased over the five years of study. (2,16% in 1998 and 2,62% in 2002) (Table 4). Comparing these data with those obtained in other similar studies¹⁹ (Gálvez Toro obtained a collaboration rate of 2,38 in a study that covered a period of 20 years), it can be asserted that the journal being analysed shows rather acceptable values that reveal the degree of development that nursing discipline is reaching. Some authors like Hirch and Singleton (quoted by López López, P.)² interpret this increase of the collaboration rate as indicative of a financial or economical assistance to research being carried out. Likewise, Giménez y Román, A.²⁰ state that collaboration is a characteristic feature of modern science and to be considered as positive, because it means an enrichment of the quality of any study. Anyway, it could be said that there is still a long distance to run between them and other publications and other related disciplines^21,22 , that show values around 5, although these studies have been exclusively carried out using searching articles.

Analysis of the (professional) field: The area of knowledge most widely written about was Medical-Surgical Nursing (30,3%; n=139) followed up by Community Nursing (12,9%; n=59). An increase (without statistical significance) was observed in the temporal analysis of articles in maternal-infant, Mental Health and Geriatrics and Gerontology areas, but also a decrease in the articles dealing with administrative issues. (Table 5). The increase occurred in maternal-infant (especially in articles related to women) and those on mental care can be associated to the revival of the midwife specialized studies and the coming out of the specialized studies on Mental Health. All this has produced midwifes and Mental Health specialists that show an important interest in research.
     39,5% (n=181) of the articles had a character of technological application, followed up by 29,9% (n=137) classified as articles of opinion; 21,6% (n=99) were research articles, and 9% (n=41), revision articles. During the period of 5 years under study, a significant change has been detected (Chi square=34,6; p=0,001) regarding to the nature of the article, being especially significant the increase of the number of research articles (from 11,6 in 1998 to 26% in 2002) (Chart 2) The ISI²³ (Institute for Scientific Information), which offers a systematic and objective methodology for critical analysis of the leading professional publications in the world, suggests that one of the quality indicators is the number of research articles included in a publication over a particular year; in the study we are dealing with, it has been highlighted how this number of research articles has been gradually increased, a fact that reveals a rise in the quality of the journal.
     We have to take into account the fact that bibliometric analyses are subjected to limitations², because they cannot cover every single knowledge nor every study bears knowledge in the same proportion. Likewise, there are institutional sectors where higher pressure is exerted in favour of publication, for example, University; this is not to be observed in other settings like clinical practice. On the other hand, we have to count on the possibility of the existence of outstanding studies that have not been disseminated using the usual channels, so they fall out of bibliometric analysis collected by periodical publications, databases, etc.

Conclusions

     -The number of articles, especially those on research (11,6% in 1998, 26% in 2002) has increased gradually during the period under study; the ISI points out this parameter as an indicator of the quality of a publication, so regarding the particular case we are dealing with, it can be asserted that the journal has acquired quality progressively.
     -Most of the authors (30%) came from a hospital setting, a percentage that even has been increased during the period under study. The autonomous region of Spain with the highest production output is Madrid, although it is losing prominence due to the increase in the production of other Spanish autonomous regions.
     -On the other hand, the increased rate of collaboration (2,16% in 1998 and 2,62% in 2002), although it is still far away from the one showed by other publications and related disciplines with values around 5, also represents an evidence of the quality and development of a discipline.
     -Although the most frequent discipline appeared in the articles was EMQ (Medical-Surgical Nursing) followed up by Community Nursing, an increase in the fields of Maternal-infant, Geriatric and Gerontological and Mental Health has been noticed, as administrative articles have undergone a decrease in production.
     -However, some questions must be pointed out as an indicator that scientific nursing production has still to be improved; for example, there is still a rather high percentage of papers undersigned by one single author (46,2%), which, in a way, appears to indicate a rather artesian scientific practice. Anyway, a positive tendency can be observed since, throughout the period under study, papers signed by several authors have increased in number.
     Evaluating the results obtained, we can conclude that the quality of the journal under analysis is high, and, furthermore, it has improved over the 5 year period since it was first released in the market; however, it seems necessary to go on developing bibliometric studies to allow researchers to test the quality of articles and publications as well as the development of nursing.

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