Abstract

SERRANO GALLARDO, Pilar; GIMENEZ MAROTO, Ana Mª  and  ARROYO GORDO, Mª del Pilar. Analisys of the scientific production published in the journal "Metas de Enfermería". Index Enferm [online]. 2005, vol.14, n.48-49, pp.78-82. ISSN 1699-5988.

Objective: To analyse the scientific production poured into the journal "Metas de Enfermera" , 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 (Chi square 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.