Mapping the literature of rehabilitation nursing.
OBJECTIVE
This paper describes a citation analysis of the literature of rehabilitation nursing, conducted as part of the Medical Library Association's Nursing and Allied Health Section's the "Mapping the Literature of Nursing Project."


METHODS
One core journal, Rehabilitation Nursing, was selected, being both the official journal of the Association of Rehabilitation Nurses and the only journal devoted exclusively to rehabilitation nursing. Citations were analyzed according to format and date and stratified according to Bradford's Law of Scattering.


RESULTS
The nineteen journals that constitute Zone 1 contribute the same number of citations as the eighty-six journals that make up Zone 2. OCLC ArticleFirst, PubMed/MEDLINE, and CINAHL provide the most inclusive coverage of the rehabilitation literature. The source journal, Rehabilitation Nursing, is the most important journal in Zone 1 and thus the most influential rehabilitation nursing journal. Relative degrees of database coverage do not change between Zones 1 and 2.


CONCLUSIONS
The journals in Zones 1 and 2 collectively represent most of the important subspecialties of rehabilitation nursing, such as the physiological, sociopsychological, and community reintegration issues involved in the long-term rehabilitation process.
Spasser
Mark A
MA
Robert B. Greenblatt, MD, Library Medical College of Georgia, 1459 Laney-Walker Boulevard, Augusta, Georgia 30912, USA. mspasser@mail.mcg.edu
Weismantel
Arlene
A
D000043:Abstracting and Indexing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015706:Bibliometrics; D016206:Databases, Bibliographic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006079:Government Publications as Topic; D006801:Humans; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011642:Publications / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012013:Reference Books; D019145:Rehabilitation Nursing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014481:United States