Objective: Little is known about factors that improve or inhibit the process of research utilization. As an emerging field of study, the theoretical foundations of research utilization are underdeveloped and there is a need to systematically map the multi-disciplinary work completed to date. The objectives of this study were therefore to (1) map the development of research utilization as an international field of study in nursing, and (2) identify the structure of this scientific community
Methods: Bibliometric methods provide insight into the productivity and flow of knowledge within a specified field of academic research. In this project, simple bibliometric analyses tallied the number of research papers for individual scientists, and countries. More complex analyses created a picture of the scientific community including the networks of researchers in the field.
Findings: The findings from the bibliometric analysis of the research utilization literature in nursing suggest a number of characteristics of the research utilization field in nursing. The field of research utilization in nursing has grown significantly since the early 1990’s with the trend of increased production of published articles. As expected, we found that nurses cite nurses, researchers cite researchers, and clinicians cite other clinicians.
Conclusions: In order for the field of research utilization to advance theoretically, this increased production of literature will have to include more substantive conceptual and empirical work as the proliferation of opinion articles adds little to theory. Given the interdisciplinary and complex nature of the field of research utilization, greater cross disciplinary and cross role citation practices are needed.
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