Abstract
Introduction
Citation analysis studies the use of citations found in various types of publications, including the use of government information, and can provide insight into research utilisation in nursing literature.
Method
Using citation analysis, this study examines the use, prevalence and jurisdiction of government information use among seven nursing research journals based on ranking criteria. Government information citations were identified across three types of articles: editorials, reviews and research articles.
Results
Nearly two‐thirds of the articles in this study cite some form of government information, and the average percentage of government citations is 5.38 of all citations. Government information was identified from national governments, inter‐governmental organizations and state and regional governments.
Discussion
Understanding the use, prevalence and jurisdiction of government information informs health information professionals allowing them to engage with nursing students and researchers about this important type of information and the types of articles that use government information.
Conclusion
Nursing researchers frequently cite government information in their work. This has implications for librarians, nursing researchers and health professionals. Understanding the intersection of government information and nursing research should inform future practice in evidence‐based nursing research and nursing education.
Keywords: bibliometrics, grey literature, nursing literature, scholarly communication
Key Messages.
Understanding the use, frequency and jurisdiction of government documents in nursing scholarship provides a platform for enhanced instruction and education about these important resources for health information professionals.
Understanding how nursing researchers use government information in their scholarly work informs health information professionals about these valuable resources produced by state, regional, international and intergovernmental bodies.
The guidelines and purpose of the identified publications reflect the number of government document citations providing a nuanced understanding of these research publications and how they disseminate information.
INTRODUCTION
Citation analysis, a subset of bibliometrics, explores the use of citations found in various types of publications. Smith (1981) argues that citations offer an unobtrusive way to examine ‘signposts’ of user behaviour that allow the researcher to avoid limitations and bias introduced through user surveys. Citation studies commonly identify and analyse user groups, types of publications or sets of publications and will often examine date range (Hoffmann & Doucette, 2012). One such application of citation analysis has been to measure the scholarly use of government information, a type of grey literature. Grey literature is comprised of resources ‘… which [are] produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats, but which [are] not controlled by commercial publishers, [or] where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body.’ (Farace, 1997; Schöpfel et al., 2005).
Weech (1978) identified literature that measured government information use and found that citation studies were being used. Postema and Weech (1991) later updated this literature study and again found that citation studies were being used to identify government information. Furthering this research, Caswell (1997) updated the previous literature reviews, while also considering the users of government information. He identified citation analyses that looked at specific disciplines, subject matter and information from specific departments or agencies. Haner (1990) conducted a citation analysis of the core literature in the geological sciences to identify government information use for the year 1985. Hogenboom (2002) looked at citations in four population studies journals from 1990 and 2000 to determine whether the use of government information in electronic format affected citation patterns. Griffiths (2008) conducted a large citation analysis of journal articles in the field of international relations that identified government information use in that field. Brunvand and Pashkova‐Balkenhol (2008) looked at citations from undergraduate annotated bibliographies for evidence of government information use and its relationship to bibliographic instruction. Chen et al. (2013) conducted a citation analysis to identify the impact of government website information on research in the social sciences and humanities in China. This progression of research studying the use of government information across disciplines establishes the value of using bibliometric analyses to explore how this information is used in scholarly communication. Understanding the use and frequency of this type of information in scholarly publishing has implications for evidence synthesis practices and overall teaching and learning in nursing research.
Bibliometric studies offer an effective way for exploring the use of grey literature in nursing research. Traynor (2011) argues that bibliometrics offer insight into the state and status of research in nursing, the value of disciplinary activity and patterns of publishing within the profession. O'Neill and Duffey (2000) suggest that bibliographic studies of nursing literature provide a bridge between research and practice, whereas Estabrooks et al. (2004) used bibliometrics to focus on the research utilisation of nursing literature. Oermann et al. (2008a) used bibliometrics to highlight the communication between research and clinical literature in nursing research. Oermann et al. (2008b) bibliometric study provided an updated look at grey literature use in scholarly communication and found that nearly 10% of the citations in clinical and research nursing journals consisted of grey literature. Giménez‐Espert and Prado‐Gascó (2019) looked at six nursing journals based on their impact factor in Science Citation Index from 2012 to 2017 and concluded that this type of analysis contributes to the current understanding of nursing research and how it evolves. Woods et al. (2020b) conducted a bibliometric analysis of grey literature in top nursing journals for the year 2011. Six types of grey literature common to nursing scholarly communication were identified: government documents, corporate organizations, conference proceedings, higher education, theses and dissertations and news. Continuing this research, Phillips et al. (2023) discussed the prevalence of the above identified types of grey literature, analysing the citations from all article formats in 2011 and 2018 from the same core nursing journals.
Nursing scholars' and professionals' skills in seeking health information from reputable government resources such as the United States Census Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) have grown over time (Cooper et al., 2019; Fossum et al., 2021). This could be due to the required inclusion of grey literature in systematic reviews and meta‐analyses, where government documents are well cited (Benzies et al., 2006). Understanding the jurisdiction (national, state/regional or intergovernmental) of government citations used by nursing scholars offers insight into how specific producers of government information are shaping and supporting salient issues for nursing scholarship. Also, studying the nuances of government information used in nursing scholarship provides a platform on which students, researchers and librarians can learn about these important information resources (Phillips et al., 2023).
OBJECTIVES
Building on this disciplinary activity and focusing specifically on the use of government information in nursing scholarship, this study analyses a subset of data from a larger grey literature study (Woods et al., 2020b) to measure government information use across seven top research journals in nursing. In this study, citation analysis was used to identify government information use, prevalence and jurisdiction across editorials, reviews and research articles to specifically quantify both the number of articles which cited government information and the number of government information citations per article and to provide a breakdown of the government citations' originations.
METHODS
The authors used citation analysis to determine the incidence of government information citations appearing in the bibliographies of articles published in 2011 and 2018 from seven top nursing research journals.
Journal selection
Journals selected for analysis are based on an evaluation of the research impact of nursing journals from 2007 to 2011 conducted by Sherwill‐Navarro et al. (2014). To determine the subset of journals from the aforementioned study, Woods et al. (2020a) built the criteria for the selection of journals based on the combined rank of the number of research articles and a rank based on the percentage of research identified in this study. This current study evaluates citations from 2011 and 2018 from the top six journals with the highest combined ranks and includes the Journal of Women's Health (JWH) as the highest‐ranked independently published journal. The year 2011 was selected because Sherwill‐Navarro et al.'s core list was created in 2012 (2014) and 2018 was selected because, at the time of data collection and coding, this was the most current full data set that could be obtained. In sum, the titles our study examines includes:
Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology (ICHE)
Journal of Advanced Nursing (JAN)
Journal of Clinical Nursing (JCN)
Journal of Women's Health (JWH)
Maternal and Child Health Journal (MCHJ)
Patient Education and Counselling (PEC)
Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences (SJCS)
Web of science
Web of Science (WOS) was selected for data extraction as it allows the corpus of citations from the articles in the core journals to be downloaded. The present study examines citations to articles tagged by WOS as editorials, articles and reviews. Correspondence, letters, retractions, corrections, proceedings and biographies are excluded from our analysis. Because our analysis and discussion will explore these three types of scholarship, it is necessary to explain what these terms mean within the context of these journals from the perspective of WOS and the author guidelines for each journal.
Editorial
WOS (Clarivate Analytics, n.d.) defines an editorial as an ‘authored viewpoint on a topic’. The term editorial implies that the article is coming from the publication's editor, publisher or an identified authority (Taylor, 2018). Taylor identifies four types of editorials: preface to an issue discussed in the journal, opinion of an issue, comment on a published study or special insight on a topic. JCN and JAN only published editorial articles by invitation only. The other journals in our study allow voluntary submissions that are vetted by the editors. In short, editorial articles in scholarly nursing journals are somewhat different than the every‐person and broad content found in editorials of newspapers.
Review
WOS (Clarivate Analytics, n.d.) defines a review as a study or survey that looks afresh at previously published literature to provide new analysis or summations of the research topic. Grant and Booth (2009) provide a more nuanced definition identifying 14 different types of reviews used in evidence‐based practice since the 1990s. Even their typology has not kept up with the explosion of new methods and types of reviews. Simply put, reviews can be conducted through the lens of an expert (literature or traditional reviews) or the rigorous analysis of the research as data (meta‐analysis, meta‐thematic synthesis or systematic review). What is important to understand is that WOS does not include popular reviews (books, movies, etc.) in this scholarly document type.
Research article
WOS (Clarivate Analytics, n.d.) defines an article document type simply as a published research paper. Case reports, defined as documents evaluating the presentation, diagnosis and treatment of patients, and clinical trials, defined as studies examining patient safety and the effectiveness of medical procedures, are each considered their own document type. Author guidelines for the content of research articles vary based on the aims and focus of the journal.
Data sets and coding
The metadata for articles published for each journal was extracted from WOS to create a parent article data set for each journal (Woods et al., 2020b). Citations for each article were downloaded into a separate dataset with a key variable (Digital Object Identifier) connecting the citation record to the article dataset. The list of articles from WOS was compared to the list of articles on the journal's official website to identify missing articles and subsequent citations.
Citation counts from WOS were confirmed for each article based on the citations in the article from the journal's website. Citations were evaluated and coded as grey literature or other (journals and monographs). The grey literature citations were coded as (1) conference proceedings, (2) government, (3) news, (4) corporate organization, (5) thesis or dissertation or (6) higher education. Descriptions of these categories can be found in the study conducted by Woods et al. (2020b). Citations identified as government (2) were further coded as national government (NG), inter‐governmental organizations (IGO) and state and regional government (SR).
RESULTS
In this study, government information represented 53% of the grey literature citations for both years.
Use
All article types
The percentage of publications citing government information from 2011 (64.5) and 2018 (63.31) and citation counts that use government information demonstrate that there is very little change over time (Table 1). Nearly two‐thirds of the articles cite government information even though the percentage of government citations is around 5 percent (Table 2). For articles that cite government information the median number of government citations is 2 and the average is 3.20 (Table 3). This trend is consistent for research and review articles with a slight dip in average for editorials.
TABLE 1.
Average number of citations by WOS article type by journal (combine 2011 & 2018).
| Journal title | Research | Editorial | Review | All |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ICHE | 20.57 | 19.57 | 54.08 | 22.33 |
| JAN | 44.42 | 14.00 | 58.27 | 43.17 |
| JCN | 40.58 | 10.76 | 51.88 | 39.35 |
| JWH | 38.99 | 16.58 | 54.18 | 38.09 |
| MCHJ | 32.37 | 8.50 | 46.60 | 32.48 |
| PEC | 37.19 | 23.02 | 68.91 | 39.63 |
| SJCS | 40.89 | 4.38 | 57.27 | 40.71 |
| Total | 37.03 | 15.54 | 57.41 | 37.11 |
TABLE 2.
Number of articles and citations citing government information.
| Year | # articles | # article citing Gov | % articles citing Gov | # citations | # Gov citations | % Gov citations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 1701 | 1061 | 62.38 | 60,979 | 3512 | 5.76 |
| 2018 | 2016 | 1246 | 61.81 | 76,565 | 3869 | 5.05 |
| Total | 3717 | 2307 | 62.07 | 137,544 | 7381 | 5.37 |
TABLE 3.
Median and average number of government citations per article type [Combine 2011, 2018].
| Article type | Median | Average (all articles) | Average (articles that cite government information |
|---|---|---|---|
| Research | 2 | 2.04 | 3.20 |
| Editorial | 2 | 1.10 | 2.83 |
| Review | 2 | 2.33 | 3.32 |
| Total | 2 | 2.03 | 3.20 |
Editorials
Author guidelines for editorials in the journals from this study vary with some restrictions on the number of references. For example, author guideline in ICHE allows no more than 10 references even though in practice ICHE editorials average 19.57. The average editorial article in our study has 15.54 references (Table 1).
Reviews
Only MCHJ has a reference count restriction of 35, whereas JCN and JAN each indicate that the number of references is negotiable. In practice, review articles in our study average 57.41 references and consistently have more references than articles in each journal. MCHJ also doesn't adhere to its limit of 35 references, averaging 46.60 references per review (Table 1).
Research articles
Four journals (JAN, JCN, MCHJ and ICHE) have limits on the number of references in research articles ranging from 35 to 40. In practice, ICHE articles average 20.57 citations per article and JAN articles exceed the limit averaging 44.36 citations per article. The average article in our study falls within the range averaging 37.03 citations per article (Table 1).
Prevalence
All article types
The percentage of articles citing government information for ‘all article types’ ranges from 51.08% (PEC) to 85.64% (MCHJ) (Table 4). The average percentage of articles citing government information for all journals is 62.36%. The percentage of government citations for ‘all article types’ ranges from 3.06 (PEC) to 11.24 (MCHJ). The average percentage of government citations is 5.38 of all the citations. SJCS has the fewest articles in the study and the second lowest percentage of articles citing government information (58.75) and percentage of government citations (4.04). ICHE has the lowest overall citation count per article, but the second‐highest percentage of government citations (7.92). JCN has a significantly higher number of articles and citation counts.
TABLE 4.
Number & percentage of articles & citations citing government information (all article types).
| Journal | # articles | # articles citing Gov | % articles citing Gov | # citations | # Gov citations | % Gov citations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ICHE | 443 | 263 | 59.37 | 9893 | 708 | 7.16 |
| JAN | 543 | 325 | 59.85 | 23,440 | 1032 | 4.40 |
| JCN | 979 | 613 | 62.61 | 38,523 | 1885 | 4.89 |
| JWH | 484 | 312 | 64.46 | 18,436 | 1168 | 6.34 |
| MCHJ | 397 | 340 | 85.64 | 12,896 | 1449 | 11.24 |
| PEC | 603 | 308 | 51.08 | 23,894 | 732 | 3.06 |
| SJCS | 257 | 151 | 58.75 | 10,462 | 423 | 4.04 |
| Total | 3706 | 2311 | 62.36 | 137,544 | 7397 | 5.38 |
Note: 20 editorial articles did not have any citations: PEC 15 editorials, JAN 3 editorials, SJCS and MCHJ 1 editorial. These are included in Table 4.
Research articles
There is no significant difference between the percentage of research articles citing government information and ‘all article types’ (Table 5). In some cases, the percentage of research articles per journal decreases slightly (ICHE, 59.89), whereas in others it increases slightly (PEC, 51.81). This is subsequently true for the percentage of government citations as well. The average percentage of research articles (63.56) and percentage of citations (5.50) is similar to the results found for all article types in Table 4.
TABLE 5.
Number & percentage of articles & citations citing government information (feature articles).
| Journal | # articles | # articles citing Gov | % articles citing Gov | # citations | # Gov citations | % Gov citations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ICHE | 360 | 212 | 58.89 | 7406 | 511 | 6.90 |
| JAN | 413 | 258 | 62.47 | 18,344 | 856 | 4.67 |
| JCN | 798 | 498 | 62.41 | 32,381 | 1500 | 4.63 |
| JWH | 436 | 286 | 65.60 | 17,001 | 1101 | 6.48 |
| MCHJ | 383 | 329 | 85.90 | 12,396 | 1397 | 11.27 |
| PEC | 496 | 257 | 51.81 | 18,448 | 597 | 3.24 |
| SJCS | 234 | 142 | 60.68 | 9568 | 390 | 4.08 |
| Total | 3120 | 1982 | 63.53 | 115,544 | 6352 | 5.50 |
Editorials
In general, editorial articles in our study cite government information at a lower rate (38.85) compared to other article types (Table 6). However, the average percentage of government citations in editorial articles (7.11) is slightly higher than articles or reviews. A little more than half of the editorials in ICHE (58.62%) and JWH (51.61%) cited government information, whereas fewer editorials in JAN (33.939%) and JCN (36.71) cited government information. Editorial articles in MCHJ, PEC and SJCS are only considered in the aggregate analysis due to low numbers and skewing. Editorial articles that cite government information cite on average 2.83 government citations (Table 3).
TABLE 6.
Number & percentage of articles & citations citing government information (Editorials).
| Journal | # articles | # articles citing Gov | % articles citing Gov | # citations | # Gov citations | % Gov citations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ICHE | 58 | 34 | 58.62 | 1135 | 127 | 11.19 |
| JAN | 56 | 19 | 33.93 | 784 | 49 | 6.25 |
| JCN | 79 | 29 | 36.71 | 850 | 50 | 5.88 |
| JWH | 31 | 16 | 51.61 | 514 | 40 | 7.78 |
| MCHJ | 4 | 3 | 75.00 | 34 | 12 | 35.29 |
| PEC | 42 | 6 | 14.29 | 967 | 22 | 2.28 |
| SJCS | 8 | 1 | 12.50 | 35 | 7 | 20.00 |
| Total | 278 | 108 | 38.85 | 4319 | 307 | 7.11 |
Note: 20 editorial articles did not have any citations: PEC 15 editorials, JAN 3 editorials, SJCS and MCHJ 1 editorial. These are included in the counts in Table 6.
Reviews
The percentage of reviews (71.75) that cite government information is higher than the percentage of research articles citing government information (63.53) found in Tables 5 and (7). The percentage of review articles citing government information in JCN (84.31) is higher than its research articles (62.41). MCHJ has a consistently high percentage of reviews (80.00) and research articles (85.90) citing government information. The smaller number of review articles from MCHJ (10) may skew these numbers. The average percentage of citations from review articles (4.07) is lower than editorials and research articles. However, the average number of government citations used by review articles citing government information (Table 3) was slightly higher (3.32).
TABLE 7.
Number & percentage of articles & citations citing government information (Review Articles).
| Journal | # articles | # articles citing Gov | % articles citing Gov | # citations | # Gov citations | % Gov citations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ICHE | 25 | 17 | 68.00 | 1352 | 70 | 5.03 |
| JAN | 74 | 48 | 64.86 | 4312 | 127 | 2.94 |
| JCN | 102 | 86 | 84.31 | 5292 | 335 | 6.33 |
| JWH | 17 | 10 | 58.82 | 921 | 27 | 2.93 |
| MCHJ | 10 | 8 | 80.00 | 466 | 40 | 8.58 |
| PEC | 65 | 45 | 69.23 | 4479 | 113 | 2.19 |
| SJCS | 15 | 8 | 53.33 | 859 | 26 | 2.91 |
| Total | 308 | 221 | 71.75 | 17,681 | 738 | 4.07 |
Jurisdiction
National governments
A total of 74% of government citations (5467) in our study are from 66 countries (Table 8). More than half (58%) of the NG citations in our study are from North America led by the United States (3085) the highest NG count and Canada (132). MCHJ has the highest percentage of articles citing NG (72.29) followed by ICHD (57.34) and JWH (54.96). National governments in North America are cited less in PEC (30.68), JAN (18.23), JCN (17.36) and SJCS (6.23).
TABLE 8.
All article types, government citations by jurisdiction (National Government).
| NG articles | Article total | % article NG | NG citations | NG Cit per NG art | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ICHD | 269 | 443 | 60.72 | 616 | 2.29 |
| JAN | 258 | 543 | 47.51 | 672 | 2.60 |
| JCN | 500 | 979 | 51.07 | 1281 | 2.56 |
| JWH | 287 | 484 | 59.30 | 947 | 3.30 |
| MCH | 314 | 397 | 79.09 | 1076 | 3.43 |
| PEC | 281 | 603 | 46.60 | 596 | 2.12 |
| SJCS | 118 | 257 | 45.91 | 279 | 2.36 |
| Total | 2027 | 3706 | 54.70 | 5467 | 2.70 |
Our study identifies 22 European countries from 27% of the NG citations (1604). The United Kingdom (780) has the second‐highest NG count in our study cited primarily in JAN and JCN. The United Kingdom (UK) is followed by Sweden (190), Ireland (145), Norway (85) and the Netherlands (75). NG citations from Sweden, Norway and Finland are primarily found in SJCS and JCN.
The Australian continent includes the third‐highest NG (414) cited in our study, with citations primarily originating from New Zealand (63). There are 21 countries in Asia from 13% of the NG citations in our study. The journals with the highest percentage of articles citing NG from Asia are JCN (17.77) and JAN (15.34), specifically from Taiwan (57) and South Korea (41). Middle Eastern countries are included in the overall analysis of NG from Asia (Iran, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey); Turkey is cited the most from the Middle Eastern NG (11) in 8 articles from JCN (6) and JAN (2).
The study found NG citations from 12 countries in Africa and 8 countries in South America from 1.32% of the NG citations in our study. South Africa (11) and Kenya (11) have the highest number of citations in our study for African NGs. Brazil (9) and Honduras (6) for South American NGs. MCHJ had the most articles (11) citing NGs in South America. JCN had 5 articles citing NGs in Africa.
State/regional
Our study identifies some interest in subnational government information in nursing scholarship (Table 9). This includes common geopolitical areas such as counties, states, cities or provinces. However, it also includes regional health sources run by the government. For example, the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom operates as four regional entities: NHS England, NHS Scotland, NHS Wales and NHS Northern Ireland. Overall, 14.36% of the articles in our study cite a state or regional government entity. Both MCHJ (38.29) and ICHD (14.22) primarily cite sources in the United States, whereas JAN (14.92) and JCN (16.55) cite subnational sources in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. There were only 6 citations to municipal or city governments.
TABLE 9.
All article types, government citations by jurisdiction (State and Regional Government).
| SR articles | Article total | % article SR | SR citations | SR Cit per SR art | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ICHD | 63 | 443 | 14.22 | 33 | 1.91 |
| JAN | 81 | 543 | 14.92 | 36 | 2.25 |
| JCN | 162 | 979 | 16.55 | 100 | 1.62 |
| JWH | 35 | 484 | 7.23 | 22 | 1.59 |
| MCH | 152 | 397 | 38.29 | 80 | 1.90 |
| PEC | 28 | 603 | 4.64 | 21 | 1.33 |
| SJCS | 11 | 257 | 4.28 | 9 | 1.22 |
| Total | 532 | 3706 | 14.36 | 301 | 1.77 |
Inter‐government organizations
Government information from an IGO represents a consensus or an agreed‐upon aggregate among the countries it represents (Table 10). In sum, it is a special type of information that often summarises national government information. Our study identifies 1521 citations to IGOs (Table 9). The World Health Organization (WHO) is the most cited IGO (1114), followed by the European Union (96), the Organization of Economic Development (57) and World Bank (21). Articles that cite IGOs average 1.81cites and range from 1.60 (ICHD) to 2.45 (MCHJ). JCN (444) has the most IGO cites, but SJCS has the highest percentage of articles that cite IGOs (31.13).
TABLE 10.
All article types, government citations by jurisdiction (Inter‐Government Organization).
| IGO articles | Article total | % article IGO | IGO citations | IGO Cit per IGO art | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ICHD | 60 | 443 | 13.54 | 96 | 1.60 |
| JAN | 162 | 543 | 29.83 | 279 | 1.72 |
| JCN | 266 | 979 | 27.17 | 444 | 1.67 |
| JWH | 88 | 484 | 18.18 | 186 | 2.11 |
| MCH | 94 | 397 | 23.80 | 230 | 2.45 |
| PEC | 91 | 603 | 15.09 | 153 | 1.68 |
| SJCS | 80 | 257 | 31.13 | 133 | 1.66 |
| Total | 840 | 3706 | 22.67 | 1521 | 1.81 |
DISCUSSION
Given that grey literature is a required element of evidence‐based scholarly output, in work such as systematic reviews (Phillips et al., 2023), and that government documents have been found to be the most prevalent type of grey literature in nursing publications (Woods et al., 2020b), it stands to reason that understanding the use, prevalence and jurisdiction of said materials will add value to librarians' interactions within nursing scholarship.
Engaging with nursing learners to strengthen their evidence synthesis skills provides them with a stronger background in locating unique information such as resources focusing on hard‐to‐find populations, regional datasets or agency reports (Enticott et al., 2018). Government publications are a necessary resource, rounding out research by shedding light where peer‐reviewed articles and scholarly publications fall short. Recognising the different types of nursing scholarship where government documents are cited can further enhance this educational objective, demonstrating strong avenues of use and impact. Educators have the opportunity to clarify the importance of editorials, research articles and review articles and discuss the roles they play in the broader field of nursing. Editorials provide a professional persuasive platform, where experts can address a specific topic in a less formal manner than the research or review article format. Incorporating information from government documents can succinctly support points and draw on strong, professionally recognised materials, such as guidelines created by government organizations, to support the topic (Oerther et al., 2020).
The breadth of NG and IGO use reflects the international scope of many of the journals. In particular, the inclusion of SJCN may have influenced the higher representation of Scandinavian countries. The authors also posit that the NG and IGO citations are from countries with similar health care systems and practices. Lastly, the breakdowns of the NG locations are not a complete surprise since we choose English language journals.
The prevalence of government document citations across all three types of publications reflects both the length and purpose of each. Editorials had the lowest rate of government document citations, which reflects their shorter length and typically smaller number of citations in general. Review articles had the highest percentage of government document citations, reflecting their traditionally long length, but also the requirement to search for and include grey literature in publications such as systematic reviews (Phillips et al., 2023). The overall prevalence of two‐thirds of all articles citing government documents in 2011 and 2018 proves that its use and inclusion is an important aspect of nursing research. The selection of government documents to use in any given study, whether it is an editorial, review or research publication, will be acutely dependent upon the topic of the work. The strategic selection of government information from a pool of resources that are also acutely specific in scope and limited in quantity, is represented in the findings of this study, as well.
Limitations
The journals selected had an English language bias. This study focused on the prevalence and impact of government information citations by type of article from a limited core of nursing journals. Consequently, it does not address why government resources were cited. To explore causality, a deeper analysis of the article would need to be conducted. The article document type used by WOS fails to differentiate the nuances of article types identified in the journal author guidelines. However, WOS does serve to normalise article types between journals.
CONCLUSION
Nursing researchers frequently use government documents in their scholarly work, ranging from state and regional resources to international and intergovernmental bodies. Almost two‐thirds of the articles in this study cited government information. The number of government document citations reflects the guidelines and purpose of the identified publications with review articles citing the greatest number of government sources. Understanding the intersection of government information and nursing research should inform future practice in evidence‐based nursing research and nursing education. The overall use of government information in nursing scholarship is not surprising given the fact that government information sources often comprise a large subset of grey literature, and the prevalence of health‐related government resources. This research provides librarians, information professionals, nursing students and nursing scholars with valuable insight into the landscape of government information use, prevalence and origins across top nursing research journals.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
The authors, under the lead of Andrew Dudash, have no conflicts of interest in this research, writing or the submission of this paper to Health Information and Libraries.
Dudash, A. , Woods, S. , & Phillips, K. (2025). Government document citations in top nursing journals: A bibliometric analysis. Health Information & Libraries Journal, 42(1), 4–13. 10.1111/hir.12560
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the submitted article are those of the authors and are not the official position of Pennsylvania State University Libraries.
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