Interagency collaboration in Spanish scientific production in nursing: social network analysis

Objective: The objectives of this paper are to analyze the Spanish scientific production in nursing, define its temporal evolution, its geographical and institutional distribution, and observe the interinstitutional collaboration. Method: We analyze a comprehensive sample of Spanish scientific production in the nursing area extracted from the multidisciplinary database SciVerse Scopus. Results: The nursing scientific production grows along time. The collaboration rate is 3.7 authors per paper and 61% of the authors only publish one paper. Barcelona and Madrid are the provinces with highest number of authors. Most belong to the hospitalary environment, followed closely by authors belonging to the university. The most institutions that collaborate, sharing authorship of articles are: University of Barcelona, Autonomous University of Barcelona and Clinic Hospital of Barcelona. Discussion: The nursing scientific production has been increasing since her incorporation at the university. The collaboration rate found is higher than found for other papers. It shows a low decrease of occasional authors. It discusses the outlook of scientific collaboration in nursing in Spain, at the level of institutions by co-authorship of papers, through a network graph. It observes their distribution, importance and interactions or lack thereof. Conclusions: There is a strong need to use international databases for research, care and teaching, in addition to the national specialized information resources. Professionals are encouraged to normalization of the paper's signature, both, surnames and institutions to which they belong. It confirms the limited cooperation with foreign institutions, although there is an increasing trend of collaboration between Spanish authors in this discipline. It is observed, clearly defined three interinstitutional collaboration patterns. (C) 2012 Elsevier Espana, S.L. All rights reserved.