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Aim: Bibliometric analysis of the nursing literature can provide insights into the current state and dynamics of the nursing profession. This study aimed to assess global nursing‐related research activity from 2009 to 2020. Method: The corpus of nursing papers was harvested from the Web of Science Core Collection database. The bibliometric indicators and VOSviewer mapping of the retrieved papers were presented. Results: The search found 109,782 papers, and 39.0% of papers reported funded studies. Publication numbers were increasing. The USA was the most prolific country in literature production and international collaboration in nursing studies. International cooperation in nursing research was dominated by developed regions. Among the 20 most cited articles, 75% were published in first quartile journals, and review papers received a higher number of citations than original research articles. Author keyword analysis identified 'quality of life', 'mental health', 'nursing students' education' and 'adolescent' as common nursing focus topics. Conclusions: The publication trend of nursing papers was positive. However, several problems were associated with nursing research activity, including low research funding, regionally centred research activity and inactivity of developing regions in terms of international collaborations, which need to be addressed by policy makers, nursing managers and scholars. Summary statement: What is already known about this topic? Nursing research has developed rapidly worldwide over the years.Little is known about its overall development in recent years. What this paper adds? This study describes the nature of nursing research worldwide in terms of publication numbers, growth trend, geographic locus, international collaborations, the most productive authors, the most cited articles and author keywords analysis. The implications of this paper: The study is important for nursing scholars, managers and professionals to learn about the present status and dynamics of nursing research.The study provides important information for policymakers to allocate research grant that promotes the dissemination of nursing research into the broader scientific community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]