Trends in RCT nursing research over 20 years: mind the gap.

Randomised controlled trial (RCT) literature plays a fundamental role in informing evidence-based medicine and nursing. This paper aims to track geographical and temporal trends in the publication o f RCTs in nursing over the past 20 years by means o f a bibliometric analysis. The PubMed database was searched for articles published from 1 January 1991 to 31 October 2011 and satisfying this search strategy: nursing [MeSH Terms] AND (RCT OR trial* OR ‘experimental study’ OR randomised OR randomisation) AND (English[lang]). Abstracts were reviewed to assess whether they met the criteria for an RCT. A manual search of information on country o f origin was carried out and Journal Citation Reports® was used to allocate journals to subject areas. RCT methodology is increasingly drawing the attention o f nursing researchers worldwide. However, there is a large disparity in research productivity, at least in terms o f number o f published RCTs in the English language and listed on PubMed, between the most productive continents, North America and Europe, and the others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]