Mapping selected general literature of international nursing.
OBJECTIVE
This study, part of a wider project to map the literature of nursing, identifies core journals cited in non-US nursing journals and determines the extent of their coverage by indexing services.


METHODS
Four general English-language journals were analyzed for format types and publication dates. Core titles were identified and nine bibliographic databases were scanned for indexing coverage.


RESULTS
Findings show that 57.5% (13,391/23,271) of the cited references from the 4 core journals were to journal articles, 27.8% (6,471/23,271) to books, 9.5% (2,208/23,271) to government documents, 4.9% (1,131/23,271) to miscellaneous sources, and less than 1% (70/23,271) to Internet resources. Eleven journals produced one-third of the citations; the next third included 146 journals, followed by a dispersion of 1,622 titles. PubMed received the best database coverage scores, followed by CINAHL and Science Citation Index. None of the databases provided complete coverage of all 11 core titles.


CONCLUSIONS
The four source journals contain a diverse group of cited references. The currency of citations to government documents makes these journals a good source for regulatory and legislative awareness. Nurses consult nursing and biomedical journals and must search both nursing and biomedical databases to cover the literature.
Shams
Marie-Lise Antoun
ML
University of Detroit Mercy Dental Library, 8200 West Outer Drive, Detroit, MI 48219-3580, USA. shamsml@udmercy.edu
Dixon
Lana S
LS
D000043:Abstracting and Indexing / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015706:Bibliometrics; D016206:Databases, Bibliographic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D038622:Internationality; D020452:Journalism / Q000145:classification; D048108:Nursing Informatics / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015399:Nursing Research / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D009626:Terminology as Topic; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled