Introduction: Nowadays, one of the important criteria to evaluate the educational quality of the university is the results of scientific research on students. Scientific research activities become one of the important tasks of lecturers in order to improve the quality of training with the goal of approaching students’ competence in scientific research. The nursing profession is initially interested in the issue of access to research capacity, so there are very few studies on this issue. Objectives: 1) To assess the research capacity of nursing students through the RCS-N scale; (2) To describe the groups of factors affecting the motivation of nursing students to do scientific research; (3) To identify the factors related to the scientific research capacity of nursing students. Methodology: A cross-sectional descriptive study with 317 third and fourth-year nursing students at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Hue University from 06/2021 to 04/2022. Results: The group of students in the group familiar with scientific research (Knowing many/all/everything criteria about scientific research) accounted for the lowest percentage with 8.5%. The average score of the groups of factors affecting the motivation of scientific research with the group of student factors (21.19 ± 3.59); a group of lecturers factors (17.03 ± 4.01); a group of the policy of the University factors (15.92 ± 3.08); a group of facilities of the University factors (12.37 ± 2.75); a group of practice station factors (12.20 ± 2.70). There is a relationship between the mean score of the group of facilities of the University factors and the student’s research capacity score (p<0.05). Conclusion: Assessing the research capacity of nursing students is a necessity to review, analyze and evaluate nursing science research courses in order to determine the appropriate level of scientific research curriculum for nursing students. nurses and is also the first step to determining their ability to do scientific research to prepare them for future professional nurses. Key words: Assessment of Research Competency, nursing students, RCS-N Questionnaire.