Nursing Blog

A new report  has been released by US Department of Health & Human Services entitled "The U.S. Nursing Workforce: Trends in Supply and Education."  It present datas on the supply, distribution and educational information about the U.S. nursing workforce.  It covers both registered nurses (RN) and licensed practical nurses (LPN) workforces in the United States. 

The report can be found at - http://bhpr.hrsa.gov/healthworkforce/reports/nursingworkforce/index.html.

Dr. Jen Nooney, lead author, will present findings from this report and the National Center's nursing workforce agenda at our next Health Workforce Webinar, scheduled for May 14, 2013, at 2PM ET. Webinar details can be found at http://bhpr.hrsa.gov/healthworkforce/index.html.

I wanted to let you know that the TEDMED 2013 Conference is being live simulcast at Tompkins-McCaw Library if you should be interested from April 17th - 19th.  The TED (technology, entertainment, design) conference series began in the mid-1980s. The TEDMED conference talks focus on health and medicine. According to organizers, "TEDMED believes that the future of health and medicine will be shaped by vital input from leading medical colleges, teaching hospitals, government agencies and non-profit institutions around the world." In this spirit of collaboration and information sharing, the TEDMED event is broadcast free to these institutions. 

Here is a link to the lineup of speakers and a schedule if you are interested. 

The TEDMED Schedule  / Speakers By Session

The Speakers' Lineup

In the last several weeks I have been asked about impact factors when it comes to publishing.  Because of these questions I decided to compile some information on impact factors from what the measure is, articles on the debate over the measure, and finally how to find it.   I hope the information below is useful and do not hesitate to contact me if you should have any questions.  

Definition

The JCR provides quantitative tools for ranking, evaluating, categorizing, and comparing journals. The impact factor is one of these; it is a measure of the frequency with which the "average article" in a journal has been cited in a particular year or period. The annual JCR impact factor is a ratio between citations and recent citable items published. Thus, the impact factor of a journal is calculated by dividing the number of current year citations to the source items published in that journal during the previous two years (see Figure 1).

Factors that Influence Impact Factors

Date of Publication:
The impact factor is based solely on citation data and only looks at the citation frequency of articles from a journal in their first couple years of publication. Journals with articles that are steadily cited for a long period of time (say, 10 years) rather than only immediately lose out with this calculation.

Large vs. Small Journals:
Large and small journals are compared equally. Large journals tend to have higher impact factors--nothing to do with their quality.

Average Citation:
It's important to remember that the impact factor only looks at an average citation and that a journal may have a few highly cited papers that greatly increase its impact factor, while other papers in that same journal may not be cited at all. Therefore, there is no direct correlation between an individual article's citation frequency or quality and the journal impact factor.

Review Articles:
Impact factors are calculated using citations not only from research articles but also review articles (which tend to receive more citations), editorials, letters, meeting abstracts, and notes. The inclusion of these publications provides the opportunity for editors and publishers to manipulate the ratio used to calculate impact factor and falsely try to increase their number.

Changing / Growing Fields:
Rapidly changing and growing fields (e.g. biochemistry and molecular biology) have much higher immediate citation rates, so those journals will always have higher impact factors than nursing, for instance.

ISI's Indexing / Citation Focus:
There is unequal depth of coverage in different disciplines. In the health sciences, the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), the company which publishes impact factors, has focused much of their attention on indexing and citation data from journals in clinical medicine and biomedical research and has not focused on nursing as much. Very few nursing journals are included in their calculations (around 45). This does not mean that nursing journals they do not include are of lesser quality, and, in fact, they do not give any explanation for why some journals are included and others are not. In general, ISI focuses more heavily on journal dependent disciplines in the sciences and provides less coverage for areas of the social sciences and humanities, where books and other publishing formats are still common.

Research vs. Clinical Journals
In some disciplines such as some areas of clinical medicine where there is not a distinct separation between clinical/practitioner versus research journals, research journals tend to have higher citation rates. This may also apply to nursing.

(Taken from: Home - journal impact factors - guides at michigan state university libraries Retrieved 4/9/2013, 2013, from http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/impactfactors )

How to Find a Journal's Impact Factor

Video:  How to Find a Journal's Impact Factor

Steps

1. Go to the Tompkins-McCaw Library Website  and click on Web of Science under search collections.
2. On the Web of Science page go to the tabs at the top of the page and click on the one that says select a database.  
3. Select  Journal Citation Reports®
4. Select the JCR edition (Science or Social Science) and year that you want. When it comes to some subjects the subject appears under both editions. Nursing is one subject that appears in both editions.
5. Next, select a search option (view journals by subject, search for a specific journal, or view all journals) to find if the journal you're looking for has an impact factor.
6. In order to see how the journal you are interested in compares to other in a particular field, it is best to select  "view a group of journals by subject category" and click submit. 
   

7. Select the topic/category you want to see from the list (You can select more than one by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on multiple categories).  Below this list of  categories you can select how you would like to view the journals by going to the drop down menu and choosing accordingly. 

Articles:  Impact Factor Debate

• Citations are hotlinked to the article.  You will need to either be on campus or authenticate in order to access them.

• VCU Libraries: Scholarly Communications, Copyright & Publishing : The resources here provide a clearinghouse of information on copyright, publishing, and scholarly communication.  The VCU Libraries supports the teaching, research, and outreach missions of the University by guiding the faculty, students, and staff in matters relating to the dissemination and use of knowledge
  

Memberships VCU has that provide discounts to authors.

• Directory of Open Access Journals:  can look up journals by topic.  In the list of journals it tells if there are publishing fees and if there are it provides a link to the information about what it costs.

• Directory of Open Access Journals - Nursing

• University of California: Selective List of Open Access Fees:  This gives a list of fees that will give some idea of the cost that are incurred.

• BMC Nursing: What is Open Access?

• Beall's List of Predatory, Open-Access Publishers, 2012: This list is compiled by a librarian at the University of Colorado and something to consider.   (Blog from author, also contains a running list of questionable publishers)

• McCabe, M., & Snyder, C. (2010). The economics of Open-Access journals. Available at SSRN 914525.

• Watson, R., Cleary, M., Jackson, D., & Hunt, G. E. (2012). Open access and online publishing: a new frontier in nursing?. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 68(9), 1905-1908.

• Nick, J. M. (2011). Open Access Part I: The Movement, The Issues, and The Benefits. OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 17(1)

• Nick, J. (2011). Open Access Part II: The Structure, Resources, and Implications for Nurses. OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 17(1).

Publishing and research are a major focus in academia and especially here on the MCV campus.  In making decisions as to where to publish, one issue that is coming to the forefront  is whether to publish in open access journals.  In the New England Journal of Medicine this week there is a series of articles with different perspectives on this topic that may be of interest.

Carroll, M. W. (2013). Creative commons and the openness of open access. N Engl J Med, 368(9), 789-791. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1300040

Frank, M. (2013). Open but not free -- publishing in the 21st century. N Engl J Med, 368(9), 787-789. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1211259

Haug, C. (2013). The downside of open-access publishing. N Engl J Med, 368(9), 791-793. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1214750

Wolpert, A. J. (2013). For the sake of inquiry and knowledge -- the inevitability of open access. N Engl J Med, 368(9), 785-787. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1211410