The Status of Nursing Leadership Studies: Its Invisible Network of Knowledge

To explore the intellectual structure of nursing leadership research in the last decade, the most crucial publications, most influential scholars, as well as the correlations among the publications of these scholars were identified. In this study, bibliometric techniques (citation analysis and cocitation analysis) were used to investigate the intellectual pillars of nursing leadership literature. By analyzing 92 394 citations of 1317 articles regarding nursing leadership published from 2003 to 2012 obtained from the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index databases, a knowledge network of nursing leadership studies was mapped. The mapping results can be used to help identify the direction of nursing leadership research and provide a valuable tool for researchers to access the literature in this field. In this paper, the problems arising from the struggle to establish nursing leadership were empirically investigated by examining the literature by using citation and cocitation data obtained from Technovation. A brief review of similar bibliometric studies is presented to introduce the approach, accompanied by a description of the data. The principal investigation was a factor analysis that was performed to determine the latent structure underlying the nursing leadership literature. Citation and cocitation are essential research tools for evaluating the core knowledge of an academic field (1), (2). A few studies using bibliometrics to examine leadership research have been published (3), (4), but almost none have reported cocitation analysis in the nursing leadership field. Therefore, conducting this study fills the gap in nursing leadership research by providing a detailed evaluation of applying citation and cocitation to nursing leadership research. The aim of this study was to provide leadership researchers with a unique map to improve their understanding of leadership-related publications and to provide a systematic and objective map of various themes and concepts in the development of the leadership field. The linkages among publications were also identified and their statuses, positions, and contributions to the development of the nursing