Bibliometric analysis of domestic nursing related to ankylosing spondylitis based on Note Express

Objective To find out the current research status, research hotspots and development trend of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) nursing in China, discover the relevant problems in this field in time, so as to provide reference for AS nursing. Methods Bibliometric analysis was conducted on the published journals about AS nursing in China. By Note Express v3.2.0, Wanfang Database, CNKI and VIP were searched online from the published articles on AS related nursing in China published from January of 2000 to December of 2018, the statistical tool SATI 3.2 for bibliographic information analysis was used to extract and analyze the published year, periodicals, author's institutions, fund, and key words and retrieved relational matrix table on research topics through frequency analysis and saved in the form of Excel, and the Netdraw function of Ucinet software was used to generate keyword visualization network knowledge map. Results A total of 305 articles were retrieved from AS nursing journals, and the number of articles was increasing year by year; 33 articles were published in the top 8 core nursing journals, accounting for 10.61%; the largest number of articles was from the Third Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University; 88 papers were supported by funds, accounting for 28.85%; the main structure of research was formed by the research hotspots around AS, including nursing, quality of life, health education and quality of sleep, however, researches on the transitional nursing care for the patients after discharge was limited. Conclusions Although AS nursing has drawn attention from nurses, the quality of research on AS nursing should be improved, the scientific research fund should be increased in order to promote the development of AS nursing to a deeper level. Key words: Ankylosing spondylitis; Nursing research; Bibliometrics; Hotpots analysis; Periodical articles