Patterns of international collaboration in nursing and palliative research

Abstract

Objective: To investigate patterns of international collaborations in nursing and palliative research by collecting data from Medline and to visualize data using Google maps and social network analysis(SNA). Methods:Selecting 378 abstracts, author names, countries, keywords, and medical subject headings (MESH) on November 22, 2017 from the Medline in terms of title with nursing and palliative, we reported following features: (1) nation and journal distribution in papers regrading nursing and palliative; (2) research features represented by paper author-defined keywords and MESH terms. We programmed Microsoft Excel VBA routines to extract data from Medline. Google Maps and SNA Pajek software were performed to display visualized representations for this study. Results:We found that (1) the most number of papers regarding nursing and palliative are from nations of U.S. (105, 37.23%) and U.K. (41, 14.54%);(2) the most number of journals in production of nursing and palliative are Int J Palliat Nurs (54, 14.29%) and J Palliat Med (21, 14.29%); (3) the most linked keywords are palliative care and nursing home; (4) the most linked MESH terms are nursing homes and palliative care. Conclusions:Social network analysis provides wide and deep insight into the relationships among nations, coauthor collaborations, and abstract keywords. The results can be provided to strategy and decision making for readers in future.