Identifying trends, patterns, and collaborations in nursing career research: A bibliometric snapshot (1980-2017)

Background: Several studies have investigated the social and technical dimensions of a career in nursing. This paper reveals tendencies and patterns in relevant literature, through bibliometrics and scientometrics. Aim: This article aims to shed light on the scientific literature of nursing as a career, which is a growing field of study in the nursing category of the Web of Science. Methods: The researchers designed and conducted a bibliometric and scientometric study in the Web of Science Database, in April 2018. The 1,434 articles the authors evaluated were published between 1980 and 2017 in the Web of Science database. They analyzed the retrieved dataset through distancebased, graph-based, and timeline-based approaches, and text analytics in the scope of scientometrics and bibliometrics. Findings: The authors used summary statistics, text, and network analytics to determine the number of publications over the years. In addition, citation metrics, demographics, co-authorship identifications, citations, co-occurrence networks, and topic structures were used. In the keyword analysis of the studies, the concepts "nurse restriction," "satisfaction," "difficulties in the working environment," and "burn out and stress" were found to be used intensively. Discussion and Conclusion: This study is intended for nurses, managers, researchers, and also policymakers, because it is critical for them to see the rhetoric of the debates in the literature and provide the best governance and the best quality services. (C) 2019 Australian College of Nursing Ltd. Published by Elsevier Ltd.