Through the looking glass: reflections on the authorship and content of current Australian nursing journals

Abstract

Over the past three years, Australian nurses have witnessed a proliferation of locally published refereed nursing journals. This paper considers the refereed content published in four selected Australian nursing journals over a recent twelve month period. Material appearing in the Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing (AJAN), Contemporary Nurse, Nursing Inquiry and Collegian was categorized according to subject matter and authorship by gender and discipline. Findings indicate that articles pertaining to clinical practice, the practice of research, and professional nursing issues are well represented in the literature. These findings mark a change from earlier analyses of Australian nursing journals, which suggested that the epistemologies of other disciplines were over-represented in Australian nursing journals, and thus exerted a powerful influence over the development of nursing theory and scholarship. The increase in the number of refereed Australian nursing journals is indicative of the dynamic state of Australian nursing, in terms of confidence, scholarship and clinical practice development.

Measuring the outputs of Australian nursing research published 1995–2000

“…Thus six subject areas in both countries feature in the top 10, although in a different order. These findings are in contrast to an earlier study (Jackson et al . 1996) in which 35% of articles dealt with clinical practice, and only 8·4% with education.…”

“…It has been the subject of a number of previous studies (Daly 1990, Nagy et al . 1991, McConnell & Paech 1994, Jackson et al . 1996).…”

“…1996). This record suggests AJAN has influenced Australian nursing and provided a good indication of the direction of Australian nursing scholarship (Jackson et al . 1996).…”

“…Two thirds of Roberts' sample published in Australian journals. Jackson et al. (1996) analysed four Australian refereed nursing journals for authorship and content.…”

At the millennium: a slice of scholarship

“…Two initial studies explored the content of the first eight volumes and the first decade of the Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing (AJAN) (McConnell & Paech, 1993;Roberts, 1995a). These were followed by a study of four major nursing journals (Jackson, Raftos, & Mannix, 1996) and a study of one…”