Clarivate listed nursing journals in 2020: what they publish and how they measure use of social media

ObjectivesTo investigate what the most common types of articles that nursing journals purport to publish are and what they actually publish? And to investigate the extent to which academic nursing journals listed by Clarivate track alternative metrics? MethodsJournals included in the nursing Journal Citation Report journal category in 2019 described as nursing were identified and considered suitable for inclusion in the analysis. Instructions for authors were reviewed online and mention of each type of article identified. The tables of contents of each issue of each journal published during 2019 was examined and the types of articles published were extracted to a spreadsheet into permitted article types and published articles. Likewise, the use of alternative metrics by each journal was extracted to a spreadsheet. Pearsons and Spearmans correlation analysis was applied to investigate the relationship between articles permitted and articles published. ResultsIn the 2020 Journal Citation Report, 123 journals were listed. The most common article type permitted was original research (n=117), followed by review papers (n=116) and discussion papers (n=63). Original research (n=7045); review papers (n=1268); discussion papers (n=1225); editorials (n=793) and commentaries (n=776) were the most commonly published categories of article. Of journals examined, 108 (96.8%) tracked mentions on social media and the Altmetric score was the most commonly use (75%). There was a strong correlation (r=0.73; p=0,002) between the numbers of article permitted and published and a strong correlation (rho=0.86; p<0.001) in terms of the rankings of the permitted and published articles. ConclusionsThere is a relationship between the most frequently permitted article types and those published, especially for the most frequent categories of both. Original articles, review papers and discussion papers are the backbone of academic publishing in nursing with original articles vastly outweighing review and discussion papers. Most Clarivate listed journals now use some method of tracking alternative metrics indicating how seriously publishers take their social media profiles.