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Family Nursing

This guide is to assist you in researching topics related to the family nursing field. Here you will find information about finding books, ebooks, journals, databases, videos, websites, and more about family-centered nursing.

Nursing Journal Identification

Stack of magazine with marked pages.

 

Nursing Journal Identification

An important part of your first assignment is making sure that your articles are coming from journals that are solely focused on the nursing field.

There are a couple of ways you can make sure they are the right stuff:

 

 

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Identifying Nursing Journals

Check the Title

-- many (if not most) will have the word Nurse, Nurses, or Nursing right in the title. This is a clear sign of a Nursing Journal.

a few notable exceptions:

OneSearch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next. If you think you have a Nursing Journal in your hand but you aren't sure; check the scope of the journal. 

Check the Scope

1. Do a google search for the title (don't forget to include the keyword 'journal' so you stay on topic)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Look for results that will have the genuine scope of the document. Sometimes they are a website for the journal itself, but most often it will be for the publisher so look for something similar to the following URLs:

  • https://journals.lww.com/...
  • https://journals.sagepub.com/...
  • https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/...
  • https://www.journals.elsevier.com/...
  • https://www.tandfonline.com/...

3 Check the scope (About, About publication, etc.).  Look for clues in the journal scope regarding related Nursing associations, or phrases to indicate that Nursing is the sole focus. You don’t want a journal that is multidisciplinary. Here are some examples:

  • Nursing Journal is written for advanced practice nurses and nurse managers who...
  • Nursing Journal is the official scholarly publication of the National Emergency Nursing Association (NENA).
  • Nursing Journal considers articles on all aspects of nursing research, training, education, and practice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Avoid

  • Journal aims to provide a forum for the international health care research community...  (too broad)
  • A peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary journal... (multidisciplinary)
  • Journal relates to healthcare received in the community, usually from a general practitioner or practice nurses... (indicates more than just nursing)

Finding Nursing Journals

Isolating Nursing Journals in your search can be tricky; here are some tips:

Manually check

- Look at the title to see if they meet the criteria discussed on the previous section

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Limiters & Filters

 

-- Some databases like CINAHL (example below), Ovid, and PubMed have specialized subset limiters and filters that can be used to isolate Nursing Journals. 

CAUTION: you still need to check the scope if it's not apparent from the title. For example, The Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences is often identified as a nursing journal by these limiters; but while much of its focus IS nursing, it's actually multidisciplinary.

 

 

-- you could also use Publication filters to exclude specific titles in your search results that do not meet your criteria, or conversely, look at only isolated titles (OneSearch - as shown in the example - allows us to do both simultaneously - however, not all journals included in the results are displayed).

Look for filters called "Publication Name" or "Journal Title". This is a much slower process and not my favoured technique. But it is an option depending on the database you are using. 

 

Also, remember that not all journals are tagged equally, so some publishers may not have the tags for these limiters or filters to be caught.

 

Field Codes

-- many databases allow for the use of field codes - this allows for targeted searches in specific areas of an article’s content. In CINAHL (example below) we have ‘SO Publication name’ and in PubMed, it's ‘Journal’. Search these fields for keywords such as Nurse, Nurses, or Nursing to filter out likely nursing journals. 

 

 

 

This technique will filter out those journals that do not have Nurse in the title. So again, you may miss some but it does get you a step closer.

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