Objectives: to characterize the scientific contribution nursing has made regarding coverage,
universal access and equity in health, and to understand this production in terms
of subjects and objects of study. Material and methods: this was cross-sectional, documentary research; the units of analysis were 97
journals and 410 documents, retrieved from the Web of Science in the category,
"nursing". Descriptors associated to coverage, access and equity in health, and
the Mesh thesaurus, were applied. We used bibliometric laws and indicators, and
analyzed the most important articles according to amount of citations and
collaboration. Results: the document retrieval allowed for 25 years of observation of production, an
institutional and an international collaboration of 31% and 7%, respectively. The
mean number of coauthors per article was 3.5, with a transience rate of 93%. The
visibility index was 67.7%, and 24.6% of production was concentrated in four core
journals. A review from the nursing category with 286 citations, and a Brazilian
author who was the most productive, are issues worth highlighting. Conclusions: the nursing collective should strengthen future research on the subject, defining
lines and sub-lines of research, increasing internationalization and building it
with the joint participation of the academy and nursing community.