Mapping the literature of pediatric nursing

Background: Pediatric nurses work in an interdisciplinary field and face ever-increasing demands on their time and knowledge. Selection tools for librarians serving this group are available, but only one bibliometric analysis has examined citations to aid collection development. Method: The ʹʹMapping the Literature of Nursing Projectʹʹ protocol was used. Three source journals were selected, and a citation analysis of articles from 1998 to 2000 was conducted. Results: The frequency of journal citation was tabulated, and a list of the most frequently cited journals was created. Just over 1% of the cited journals produced 33% of the citations. PubMed/MEDLINE, Science Citation Index, and Social Sciences Citation Index provided the most complete indexing coverage of all types of the journals, while CINAHL providing the most complete coverage of nursing journals. Books were the second-most frequently cited format. Conclusions: Citation analysis of journal articles from pediatric nursing journals may be helpful in selecting journals for libraries serving pediatric nurses and those who conduct pediatric nursing research. Librarians should consider adding indexes to their collection in addition to PubMed/MEDLINE to access the broad range of journals useful to this specialty.