Citation analysis of non-experimental nursing research papers

Objective To describe the citations of non-experimentsl nursing research papers in China,to reflex the academic level of non-experimental nursing research papers and the utilization of reseachers to literature information. Methods 2547 non-experimental nursing research papers were manually searched out from 466 issues of two kinds of core nursing journals named Chinese Journal of Nursing and Journal of Practical Nursing (which was changed to Chinese Journal of Practical Nursing in 2003) from 1990 to 2006,bibliometric analysis was used to analyze their citations from quantities, price indicator, sorts, resources and languages. Results The quantity of citations per paper was 4.4, which increased over time; the Price indicator was 55.6%; citations to journal predominated(73.4%) and there was a growing trend over time; most citations were to medical journals outside the profession of nursing (59.1%), while citations to nursing increased gradually; Chinese (73.6%) was the language of most of the citations, while the percentage of English citations increased gradually. Conclusions The competence of absorbing information of researchers in China was gradually increasing, their competence of absorbing foreign information needs to be strengthened urgently. Key words: Non-experimental nursing research;  Citation analysis;  Bibliometrics