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SPECIAL REPORT

The Impact of Iberoamerican Nursing Journals in 2010: Cuiden Citation Analysis

Liliana Marcela Reina Leal,¹ Lady Catalina Jerez Fonseca,¹ Manuel Amezcua^1,2
1Grupo de Estudios Documentales - GED, Fundación Index. Granada, España. ²Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad de Granada, España

Mail delivery: Liliana Marcela Reina Leal. GED. Fundación Index. Apdo. 734, 18080 Granada, España

Manuscript received by 18.9.2012
Manuscript accepted by 12.11.2012

Index de Enfermería [Index Enferm] 2012; 21(4): 245-251

How to cite this document

Abstract

Introduction: The process of development and consolidation of nursing as a science is clearly perceptible in the exponential increase of the generation and consumption of its scientific production, despite their marginalization by the hegemonic science. The Iberoamerican Scientific Space (ECI) is essential in this process, so it is necessary to know the behavior of the nurse production and its consumption in this territorial context. Methodology: Descriptive study, through the bibliometric analysis of nurse production edited in the ECI during the year 2010. As journals source, 38 nursing journals were selected based on inclusion criteria established in previous studies. Results: Two journals were excluded due to breach on the timeliness of publication. 2111 articles from 36 journals source were included and analysed 38963 bibliographic references, 9617 these references were to nursing journals. The source journals accumulated 6117 appointments and were observed some significant fluctuations in its impact. Discussion and conclusions: This corroborates the trend to an increase in production and consumption with greater immediacy of nursing scientific publications in ECI, an important sign in its consolidation as a science and requires the commitment of nursing professionals.
Key-words: Nursing Research/ Bibliometrics/ Journal Impact Factor/ Scientific Communication and Diffusion/ Scientific and Technical Publications.

Introduction

    Publication in scientific journals is the primary mechanism for disseminating the results of research to complete the cycle of scientific production, allowing for these results to be replicated, transferred to other contexts and used as a source to plant new research questions.^1,2 However, it appears that this form of publication has changed its objectives to respond to the needs of governments and funding agencies in creating science policy and evaluating scientific activity. An evaluation should normally be realized in terms of the impact of the publications, which is measured through bibliometric indicators of classifying journals according to their visibility in the scientific community, and in turn comparing them with others in their same subject area.^3-6 It cannot be forgotten that these indicators require other criteria in order to help determine the intrinsic quality of the production.⁷ Furthermore, to be useful, they need to be applied with scientific honesty, without exclusions that hinder the natural processes of transfer and application of knowledge in practice.^8,9
    The exponential increase in scientific nursing information production generated by the Iberoamerican Scientific Space (ECI) and its consumption in of itself is an increasingly apparent phenomenon,^10,11 although marginalized by hegemonic science, which has motivated the development of bibliometric studies in which they have analyzed the behaviour of such production to display and measure the evolution of nursing as a science. Such an increase in the nursing scientific production, perceptible in the progressive creation of scientific nursing journals, the primary form of transmitting knowledge, 6 and a greater publication of research articles, is becoming an important sensor in establishing the process and development of nursing science.¹²
    Previous studies analyzing the consumption of nursing knowledge in the ECI saw a certain maturity in the behaviour of nursing knowledge in this area, demonstrated by the gradual increase in electronic format journals, as well as the consumption of this production with greater speed, not implying further isolation of the ECI.^13,14 In fact, new tools developed by the Documentary Studies Group (GED) of the Index Foundation, like the setpoint Impact Factor (vaFl), that identifies the equivalence between CUIDEN Immediate Impact Indicator (RIC) and the Impact Factor (IF), make it possible to compare bibliometric values generated in different scientific and cultural areas.¹⁵ Thus, in order to understand the behaviour in the consumption of nursing production of ECI during 2010 in its own area, as the GED has been doing for more than a decade, they have upgraded the Impact Indicators as current as well as historic in some ECI journals, making visible what hegemonic science hides.¹⁶

Methodology

    There has been a new bibliometric analysis of nursing publications, taking as reference journals indexed in the CUIDEN database and edited during 2010. To this end we have selected 38 nursing journals as source articles, from seven nationalities: Spanish (22 journals), Brazil (8), Mexico (3), Colombia (8), Chile (1), Cuba (1), and Portugal (1) [See Table 1]. The criteria of inclusion and exclusion were established in former GED studies for bibliometric studies: 16 journals included in the CUIDEN database with an immediate impact other than 0 in previous studies, with three or more citations in previous analysis per year of study and, whether they meet or not they meet previous requirements, source journals in previous studies. All articles published in source journals with a bibliography are included, systematically excluding publications corresponding to interviews, editorials and letters to the editor.
    Selected as variables for the calculation of indicators were the following: number of articles published by each journal source, number of citations received for each magazine, year of publication of the cited articles and number of self-citations.
    The indicators calculated are: Immediate Impact CUIDEN (RIC), Immediate Estimated Impact (RIEC); for non source journals with at least five citations in the two years prior to the citation Immediacy Index, Historical CUIDEN impact (Rc_h), and Historical CUIDEN impact without self-citations (Rch_a).^6,13,16 A descriptive analysis has been conducted and results are presented in table and graph form.

Results

    For 2010, 2.111 articles were included, coming from 36 source journals. Excluded from the study were the magazines Enfermería en Cardiología (España) and Tempus Vitalis (España), because the date of finalization of data collection had not been published or incomplete numbers had been posted for the year they were reviewed. The articles included contained a total of 38.963 bibliographic references with an average of 18.46 references per article. Of all the references, 22.631 (58.08%) corresponded to scientific periodical publications. Of all the journal references, 9.617 (42.49%) were from nursing journals, equivalent to 24.68% of the total references. The source journals accumulated 6.117 of these citations to nursing journals (63.60%).

Immediate Impact CUIDEN (RIC). For 2010, the median value of RIC was .5792, above which accumulated 12 journals and below 24 journals. The magazines above the average RIC were: Revista Enfermagem UERJ (Brazil), Index de Enfermería (Spain), Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem (Brazil), Texto & Contexto: Enfermagem (Brazil), Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem (Brazil), Revista Electrônica de Enfermagem (Brazil), Revista da Escola de Enfermagem Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil), Escola Anna Nery Revista de Enfermagem (Brazil), Acta Paulista de Enfermagem (Brazil), Ética de los cuidados (Spain), Temperamentvm (Spain) y Enfermería Intensiva (Spain).
    Table 1 shows the values of RIC for each of the source journals studied. The journal with the highest RIC with a value of 2.5149 was the Revista Enfarmagem UERJ (Brazil), showing an increase in value and maintaining its same position with respect to the prior analysis of 2008 (available at https://www.index-f.com/cuiden_cit/citacion08.php), when it was also placed in the first position with an RIC of 2.1471. Of the Spanish journals, the journal Index de Enfermería was the journal with the most impact. The journals of Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Portugal received values of impact below average.
    The journals that make their debut in this study are Revista Eletrônica de Enfermagem, Acta Paulista de Enfermagem, Ética de los Cuidados, Biblioteca Lascasas and Paraninfo Digital, of which the first three were located in the second and third quartile and the last two obtained values that placed them in the bottom quartile.
    Figure 1 shows the behaviour of the values of the RIC in 2010 compared to 2008. The journals that have shown the greatest important increase are: Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem (that shows a growth of almost double the impact), Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem, Enfermería Intensiva, Texto & Contexto: Enfermagem, Escola Anna Nery Revista de Enfermagem, Revista Enfermagem UERJ, Temperamentvm and Revista da Escola de Enfermagem Universidade de São Paulo. The more discrete improvements (less than 0.1) were the journals: Avances de Enfermería, Referência, Index de Enfermería and Enfermería Global. Meanwhile, the most important falls were seen in the journals Evidentia, Gerokomos, Nure Investigación and Desarrollo Científico de Enfermería.

Estimated Immediate Impact (RIEC). Calculated for non source journals with at least five citations in the two years prior to analysis. These magazines come from Latin American settings, like Brazil and Spain as well as Anglo-Saxon settings. To calculate this indicator the number of items in the year of study was obtained from the review of abstracts of journals and from the PubMed and CUIDEN databases.
    The two ECI journals of which an RIEC was calculated show an increase with respect to the 2008 analysis, most notable in the Online Brazilian Journal of Nursing (Brazil). The Anglo-Saxon magazines, despite the departure of the Journal of Nursing Administration (USA), showed a small increase in respect to the 2008 study. Moreover, this highlights the increase in the presence of magazines in this territory in the present study, although the majority have an immediacy index of zero.

Immediacy Index. The maximum value of the Immediacy Index in the study was reached by the journal Index de Enfermería with 29 articles published and 9 citations received during the year of study. The minimum value was 0, received by a third of the analyzed journals, in contrast to the 2008 study in which almost a half of the articles obtained an Immediacy Index of 0.
    The median Immediacy Index value was 0.0387. The magazines that scored an Immediacy Index that exceeded the median value were: Index de Enfermería, Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem, Temperamentvm, Revista Enfermagem UERJ, Revista de Enfermería del Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, Revista Electrônica de Enfermagem, Enfermería Comunitaria, Desarrollo Científico de Enfermería, Tesela, Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem, Enfermería Intensiva and Enfermería Clínica.
    Figure 2 allows comparison between the Immediacy Index values calculated for 2010 and the values obtained for the same publications in 2008. The magazines that showed increases in their Immediacy Indexes were: Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem, Temperamentvm, Enfermería Comunitaria, Tesela, Revista de Enfermería del Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, Enfermería Intensiva, Revista Cubana de Enfermería, Revista de la Sociedad Española de Enfermería Nefrológica, Enfermería Clínica, Index de Enfermería, Investigación y Educación en Enfermería, Rol de Enfermería and Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem. The journals that did not show changes in their Immediacy Index, maintaining themselves in the zero (0), as in 2008 were: Gerokomos, Ciencia y Enfermería, Inquietudes, Presencia, Nure Investigación and Revista Mexicana de Enfermería Cardiológica. The lowering of Immediacy Index values deserves attention, such as in the journals: Revista Enfermagem UERJ, Desarrollo Científico de Enfermería and Cultura de los Cuidados, among others.

Historical CUIDEN Impact (Rc_h): La Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem is the magazine with the greatest Historical CUIDEN Impact for the present year of study with of value of 8.018 and a total of 1323 values accumulated [Figure 3]. The median value of the Rc_h was 2.269, which shows a significant increase in comparison with the median value of 2008 which was 1.679 (https://www.index-f.com/cuiden_cit/ind_historica.php?ano=2008), and that of 2006, which was 1.312 (https://www.index-f.com/cuiden_cit/ind_historica.php?ano=2006). 41.67% of journals obtained values above the median: Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem, Index de Enfermería, Texto & Contexto: Enfermagem, Revista Enfermagem UERJ, Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem, Revista da Escola de Enfermagem Universidade da São Paulo, Revista de Enfermería del Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, Cultura de los cuidados, Gerokomos, Enfermería Intensiva, Acta Paulista de Enfermagem, Rol de Enfermería, Escola Anna Nery Revista de Enfermagem, Enfermería Clínica, Revista Eletrônica de Enfermagem.

Historical CUIDEN Impact without Self-citations (Rch_a): The Rc_h provides information about the impact of source journals based on a longer period of time and introducing a correction factor by eliminating self-citations, therefore making it necessary to approximate the effect of self-citations on this indicator. Like the Rc_h, the largest Rch_a was given to Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem with a value of 5.297: of the 1.323 citations accumulated 449 (33.94%) were self-citations. 15 Source journals were above the median value of this indicator, which was 1.476: Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem, Index de Enfermería, Texto & Contexto: Enfermagem, Cultura de los cuidados, Gerokomos, Revista da Escola de Enfermagem Universidade da São Paulo, Revista de Enfermería del Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem, Revista Rol de Enfermería, Acta Paulista de Enfermagem, Enfermería Clínica, Enfermería Intensiva, Ciencia y Enfermería, Investigación y Educación en Enfermería and Nure Investigación [See Table 3].
    The mean value of auto-citations was 34.81%, showing a slight increase from the 2008 result, which was 34.46%. The source journals with self-citations of more than 50% were: Temperamentvm, Referência, Archivos de la Memoria, Revista Enfermagem UERJ, Avances en Enfermería, la Revista de la Sociedad Española de Enfermería Nefrológica and Revista Electrônica de Enfermagem, while the journals of a self-citations equal or less than 20% were: Evidentia, Cultura de los cuidados, Rol de Enfermería, Enfermería Comunitaria, Paraninfo Digital, Revista Mexicana de Enfermería Cardiológica and Nure Investigación [Table 3].
     As can be seen, the self-citation of articles is a phenomenon of great importance in the journals studied. Therefore it is important to investigate how this affects the historical impact of these journals. The journals that appear altered by the historical impact in more than one unit after deducting the self-citations are: Revista Enfermagem UERJ (3.22), Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem (2.72), Index de Enfermería (1.94), Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem (1.69), Revista da Escola de Enfermagem Universidade da São Paulo (1.38), Enfermería Intensiva (1.35), Texto & Contexto: Enfermagem (1.26), Revista Electrônica de Enfermagem (1.21), Temperamentvm (1.19), Archivos de la Memoria (1.18), Escola Anna Nery Revista de Enfermagem (1.17) [Figure 3].

Discussion

    In the development of the process of collecting references in source journals, inherent difficulties were found, i.e. errors were found in both the physical description of the source as well as in the authors mention, in which cases facilities that provide electronic journals and databases were searched to find references and when possible the data was normalized and supplemented. Those references that could not be found were not used in the study.
    The values obtained in 2010 of both the RIC as well as the Immediacy Index corroborate the assumptions related to the possibilities of access to full-text editions of journals. Moreover, the timely publication and quick indexing in databases, permits them a premature citation^13,17 as well as the prompt transfer of results into practice. Proof of this is that all of the journals included are published in an electronic format with some of them also using their print version. There are some striking differences that are highlighted below.
    It also highlights the large increase of the RIC in Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem which more than doubled its 2008 impact. Something similar happened with Rc_h and Rch_a, which show an increase of over 100%, the first went from of 3.387 in 2008 to 8.018 in 2010 while the second went from 2.168 in 2008 to 5.927 in 2010. For now this growth in Rc_h cannot be exclusively attributed to self-citation, as this statistic has fallen from 36% in 2008 to 33.94% in 2010.
    The most significant drops were seen in the magazine Evidentia, that while in 2008 showed a slight drop in respect to the 2006¹³ study, this year it saw a marked decrease in its RIC. Similar cases are those of Gerokomos, Nure Investigación y Desarrollo Científico de Enfermería, which had almost double the impact in 2008 than what it recieved in 2006, but in this study its impact dropped to lower than the 2006¹³ value. In the previous study, these journals were places in the 1^st or 2^nd quartile but now their results placed them in the 2^nd, 3^rd or last quartile.
    This study supports the tendency of RIC growth in journals produced in Brazil and Spain, who are in first place, while the magazine Índex de Enfermería shows growth not as significant as other journals in the 1^st or 2^nd quartile, but sustained over time. However, it is important to review the behaviour of self-citation in this study, in order to know whether the increase in RIC is related to this phenomenon. In this next CUIDEN citation analysis, a new indicator should be taken into account that calculates the RIC without self-citations, which will set a precedent and come to question whether the phenomenon of self-citation is related to the geographical context of both the authors and journals, with their editorial policies, or other aspects.
    On the other hand, the importance must be stressed of analyzing and keeping in mind those journals that although not receiving a great RIC value, do have a great Rc_h, an indictor that allows long-term observation. The window of citation is currently three years long (as a result of the presence of electronic journals), which in some cases does not allow the opportunity to index in databases and diffuse the published articles. This indicator also allows the visualization of journals with high RIC values, journals like Revista de Enfermería del Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, Cultura de los cuidados and Gerokomos which in terms of Rc_h fall in the top 10 publications as well as in terms of Rch_a. Besides these three magazines, Rol de Enfermería is also important.
    As a result of this study it should be reaffirmed that while nursing is a young discipline in the scientific environment, it is obtaining major achievements that demonstrate its maturity as a science.¹³ In the Latin American environment it is a discipline showing continued growth and consolidation through its scientific production, which is evident in a growth in confidence of the ECI as a producer of knowledge. However, there is still a long way to go, and nurses have a key role. More and better research is necessary, beyond the idea of research as a requirement i.e., investigating to build self knowledge that also contributes to the independence of discipline, impacting the reality of care¹⁹ and there by increasing the critical mass and development of quality original articles that support the advance of nursing as a science.^12,20

Table 1. Immediate Impact Factor (RIC) and Immediacy Index of the 36 source journals

Table 2. Estimated Immediate Impact (RIEC) for non-source journals

Table 3. Historical CUIDEN Impact and Historical Impact without Self-citations

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