Nursing Data Base And Bibliometrics

Health Care Data Base Bibliographic

How Bibliometrics Is Beneficial Use of Bibliometrics In Nursing Research, Citation And Bibliometrics, Bibliometrics As A Practical And Applicable System 

Whats are Bibliometrics

    Bibliometrics is broadly defined as the application of mathematical and statistical methods to published scientific literature in a disciplinary field (Pritchard, 1969). Bibliometric research methods are based on a literary model of science. 

    Using bibliometrics, information scientists assume that published research documents reflect new knowledge in a scientific field and that references in these reports represent relationships among scientists and their work.

How Bibliometrics Is Beneficial 

    Bibliometrics is a useful research methodology for describing and visually representing the communication structure of a scientific field. It has been used successfully to evaluate such things as emergence, change, and communication networks in specialty areas. 

    Bibliometric methods have been helpful in identifying the foundational fields (ie, other scientific fields) that have driven the genesis of a new scientific field. They also can be used to identify prominent scientists or documents that have influenced the intellectual development of a scientific field. 

    Thus, bibliometric studies may provide insights into the historical and sociological evolution of nursing science as well as the design of information retrieval systems in nursing.

Use of Bibliometrics In Nursing Research 

    Research questions addressed by bibliometric studies generally fall into one of four categories: 

(a) characterization of a scholarly community.

(b) evolution of a scholarly community

(c) evaluation of scholarly contributions.

(d) diffusion of ideas from within and across disciplines ( Borgman , 1990). 

    Citation data are often used in bibliometric studies and are generally collected from bibliographies, abstracting and indexing services, citation indexes, and primary journals. 

    Typically, the references of research journal articles are analyzed in bibliometric studies. Bibliographic attributes such as authors, citations, and textual content are used as variables in bibliometric research.

Citation And Bibliometrics

    Citation analysis is the best-known bibliometric strategy. It is a set of strategies for studying relationships among cited and citing literature in a scientific field. Bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis use citation analysis to demonstrate linkage of citation data. 

    In bibliographic coupling, the focus is on the citing literature; that is, the number of references two articles have in common reflects the similarity of their subject matter. In co-citation analysis the focus is on the cited literature, that is, the number of times two documents are cited together in the reference lists of later publications. 

    Sets of co-cited document pairs may be grouped together and mapped, using graphical display techniques such as cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling. The unit of analysis for co-citation analysis studies can also be journals (journal co-citation analysis) or authors (author co-citation analysis). 

    Co-word analysis is another bibliometric strategy based on the analysis of co-occurrence of keywords used to index documents or articles. This method is useful for mapping content in a research field or for tracing the evolution of networks of problems in a disciplinary field.

Bibliometrics As A Practical And Applicable System 

    Bibliometric strategies are practical and may be applied to citation data that are readily accessible on citation indexes and online electronic databases. No subjective judgments are made by the researcher about what literature best defines a scientific field or specialty area. 

    It is the scholars themselves who publish in the scientific literature that determine mine the intellectual base of the specialty area. However, citation data can portray only what the scientific community in a field of study has recognized by way of publication. In addition, bibliometrics does not have a theory that integrates the methods and techniques used in the analysis of citations. 

    There fore, it is important that the investigator clearly delimit the specialty area to be investigated, be familiar with the field of interest, and interpret citation data in conjunction with other sources of information relevant to the area of interest.