CASE STUDY Developing anjevidence-based list of journals for nursing Pamela Sherwill-Navarro, BSN, MLS; Joy C. Kennedy, MLS; Margaret (Peg) Allen, MALS, FMLA See end of article for authors' affiliations. DOI: http://dx.cl0i.0rg/i0.3163/1536-5050.102.2.009

The Nursing and AUied Health Resources Section (NAHRS) of the Medical Library Association created the 2012 NAHRS Selected List of Nursing Journals to assist librarians with collection development and to provide nurses and librarians with data on nursing and interdisciplinary journals to assist their decisions about where to submit articles for publication. This list is a continuation and expansion of a list initially known as the Key Nursing Journals list. It compares database coverage and full-text options for each title and includes an analysis of the number of evidencebased, research, and continuing education articles.

INTRODUCTION

Collection development resources are often sought by new librarians and experienced librarians in imfamiliar roles, but nursing librarians have few options. The "Brandon/Hill Selected List of Print Nursing Books and Journals" ceased publication with the twelfth version in 2002 [1]. The final Brandon/Hill list contained eighty-six nursing journals and included journal title, frequency of publication, and institutional subscription rate for 2002 [1]. Since 1969, the American Journal of Nursing has produced an annual Book of the Year list, which lists the best in nursing publishing in nineteen different categories [2]. In December 2004, Doody Enterprises began publishing a web-based subscription list, Doody's Core Tities in the Health Sciences, to fill the void left by the Brandon/Hill lists [3]. Other publishers and vendors have also created tools and lists to assist with selection of materials. Currently, however, there are not any free resources to assist nursing librarians with purchase decisions for databases and print and electronic journals. This paper reports on the development of the 2012 Selected List of Nursing Journals by the Research Committee Journal Project Team of the Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section (NAHRS) of the Medical Library Association (MLA) [4, 5]. The list was developed to assist nurses and librarians in evaluating nursing and interdisciplinary journal titles for library collection development and to

A supplemental appendix, supplemental Table 2, and supplemental Tahle 3 are available with the online version of this journal.

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identify publishing opportunities for authors wishing to submit manuscripts to nursing journals. BACKGROUND AND HISTORY

The 2012 NAHRS list is an update and expansion of the Key Nursing Journals list, originally developed in 1986 by one of the authors as a resource for an MLAapproved continuing education course and updated and expanded several times since [6, 7]. The original list was inspired by a series of articles reporting the results of surveys of the publishing practices of nursing journals written by McCloskey and Swanson [8-11]. Those authors sought to assist nurse authors in selecting appropriate journals and to improve the quality of manuscripts that nurses submitted for publication. Key nursing journal lists were distributed at MLA NAHRS meetings and in its newsletter and website from 1986 through 2001 and by Cinahl Information Systems until 2007. Key and Electronic Nursing Journals list

In 2001, the Ontario Learning Resources for Nursing (OLRN) project contracted with one of the authors for research on a proposed electronic collection to support baccalaureate nursing education in Ontario, Canada. The report included the first ranked Key and Electronic Nursing Journals list [12]. All Canadian nursing journals were added as well as all nursing titles available in an electronic format. This greatly increased the Key Nursing Journals list, which then became known as the Key and Electronic Nursing Journals list. This list included a points system based on research percentage, evidence-based practice content, reputation based on recommendation lists, and ranking in the mapping the literature of nursing stiidies [13] (e.g., Allen [14, 15], Friedman [16], Jacobs [17], and others [18-28]). Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section (NAHRS) Journal List Project Team At the MLA '08 section business meeting, NAHRS membership discussed the need to continue updating the journal list. Maintaining the list was becoming too time consuming for one person due to the increased number of journal titles and changes in electronic and print products. However, the list's author continued to receive requests for updated versions of the list, and NAHRS members felt that the list was needed to support collection development as well as to aid nurses seeking publication opportunities, an area in which librarians are frequently asked to assist. A NAHRS journal list could also be a resource for authors of future nursing journal mapping studies. Another goal for the project was to develop a unique resource that was freely available to small libraries in hospital and academic institutions and contained information on which databases indexed the relevant nursing journals and the availability of online full 105

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text. NAHRS members approved a NAHRS Journal Project Team to produce a "core" nursing journals list based on the Key and Electronic Nursing journals list [12]. METHODS The initial team consisted of two cochairs and twenty NAHRS members. By the completion of the project, the final team comprised nine volunteers plus the cochairs. The cochairs determined that additional fields were needed and that the previous list had reached the limits of paper media. The group's first decision was to transition the list to an electronic format to allow an increase in the number of titles and fields. The goal was to create a more dynamic resource that could be quickly updated and expanded. A private wiki for all journal project team members and mapping project authors was created to facilitate communication and to make needed resources readily available. With team input, the cochairs developed the following selection criteria for inclusion on the nursing journal list. Journals should be: • published as scholarly, peer-reviewed professional journals; newsletters and trade publications were excluded • published in English or bilingual English/other • currently published with a print or electronic International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) • included in the nursing subset of MEDLINE or CINAHL or a highly cited interdisciplinary journal identified in studies mapping the nursing literature Title selection began by examining titles listed in the most recent Key and Electronic Nursing Journals list and top-ranked journals identified in mapping the literature of nursing studies. Next, title changes, cessations, and new journals were identified. Newsletters and non-English-language journal titles were removed from the list. Ceased titles were removed, and title changes were alphabetized according to the current title. The cochairs spent weeks identifying title change histories, including dates. Several options, including Microsoft Excel, were considered for creating the list but were rejected due to potential compatibility issues. Also, the printed Excel list was nine pages wide and eleven pages long, too physically large to be useful. Therefore, a spreadsheet was created in Google Documents (now Google Drive). A Google form was developed for team members to complete that would automatically populate the spreadsheet when submitted. The cochairs determined the fields to be evaluated for each title based upon the fields from the final Key and Electronic Nursing Journals list and input from the International Academy of Nurse Editors (INANE), who had been considering developing a similar list. The resulting list has fifty fields, several new to this version of the list (Table 1). Other fields provide information on the publication's inclusion on relevant nursing databases, online access, evidence-based content, and results of a 106

survey of the journals' editors on publication submission policies and practices. Once the spreadsheet was created, team members were contacted and trained individually via a phone conference. After training, each team member was sent a list of three to five journal titles, information on accessing the wiki, and contact information for assistance. Team members were to complete information on those titles for each of the descriptive fields in the spreadsheet. As the spreadsheet was populated, multiple entries for some titles appeared, which was determined to be due to a limitation of the form: Once a form was submitted, it could not be amended. This forced the cochairs to evaluate each record for completeness and accuracy before duplicate records could be deleted. To address this issue, a team member created a second form. This form allowed team members to gather all required information prior to entering it on the Google form and was effective in reducing the number of duplicate and incomplete records. Another issue was the lack of standardization in formatting field elements such as volume, issue, and dates. Standardizing the format of field elements was a time-consuming editorial task. Descriptive and database coverage data The majority of the data on indexing and full-text coverage information was gathered from charts produced by database producers that indicated when indexing and full text of titles began and ended. The team members' task was to locate and validate descriptive data for assigned titles and then check each of the resources for the titles they were assigned. Some database producers did not make coverage lists available, so volunteers were sought with access to these electronic databases to conduct searches to obtain the information. After data from Web of Science were input by one of the cochairs, it was determined that checking every title in one field was a more efficient method than checking one title in every field. Team members with access to Embase, Scopus, and Web of Science volunteered to complete searches for those titles. For Mosby's Index/EMCare, Elsevier provided the cochairs with complimentary access. MEDLINE data also required searching to verify start dates for all titles not selected for Index Medicus, as coverage dates in the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Locator and the Journals database are generally based on discontinued print indexes, particularly International Nursing Index, now incorporated in MEDLINE. Ranking and evidence-based content When the 2012 NAHRS Selected List of Nursing Journals was announced prior to MLA '12 in Minneapolis, all data were complete except for the "Evidence-Based Practice Content" section. The data in the "Evidence-Based Practice Content" section expanded the "Research Content" field in the 2001 Key and Electronic Nursing Journals list [12, 13]. Listed are the number of articles (excluding editorials. J Med Lib Assoc 102(2) April 2014

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Table 1 Fields included in the 2012 Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section (NAHRS) Selected List of Nursing Journals Current title Journal uniform resource locator (URL) Current publisher Internationai Standard Serial Number (ISSN) Electronic ISSN Country of publication Year first pubiished Peer reviewed (yes/no) Association pubiication (yes/no) URL of association Frequency/issues @ year Eiectronic submission URL Manuscript styie Indexed in (dates): MEDLINE British Nursing Index CINAHL CINAHL Plus Embase EMCare/Mosby's Index PsyclNFO Cited references in (dates): CINAHL Cited References CINAHL Pius Cited References Sei Verse Scopus Web of Science Online full-text access (dates): CINAHL Full Text; aiso CINAHL Plus EBSCO Full Text Gale Infotrac/Health Reference Center Academic Medscape Journals (select) Mosby's Nursing Consult Ovid Collections PMC (PubMed Central) Science Direct ProOuest Nursing & Allied Health Source Publisher Member access Open access/free full text

Evidence-based practice content for years 2007-2011 Total articies pubiished (number)' Guidelines (number)1; Systematic reviews (number) Research articles (number)i Research percentage§ Continuing education (CEU) articles (number) Selected information on article review process based on NAHRS/lnternational Academy ot Nurse Editors (INANE) survey, 2009-2011 Peer-reviewed methods Reviewers @ Articie Electronic process Articies submitted (number) Articles accepted (number) Acceptance rate Time to review Acceptance to publication print/online

Fields in italics are new to the 2012 list. * Number indexed, as designated by CINAHL, excluding editorial, letter, overall, corrected item, brief item, and abstract publication types. t Guidelines include the publication types practice guidelines, protocol, standards, critical path, and care plan, but not articles about these formats. t Number of articies assigned the document type of "Research" by CINAHL within the time period because the article "presents an original complete research study containing data coilection, methodology, discussion of results, etc." Excluded are the publication types of erratum, editorial, ietter, overall, corrected item, brief item, and abstract, § Research percentage is calculated by dividing the number in the "Research Articles" column by the "Total Articles Published" column and rounding to two decimals.

letters, and other brief formats) published during the five-year period along with the number of guidelines, systematic reviews, research, and continuing educafion (CEU) articles. The number of research arficles was calculated using a complex search strategy based on five complete years of indexing in CINAHL Plus (Appendix, online only). CINAHL Plus was used for these searches because it offered the required publication types and indexed the greatest number of titles contained on the list. The percentage of research articles was calculated by dividing the number of research articles obtained by the search strategy by the number of substanfive articles. The journal titles on the 2001 Key and Electronic Nursing Journals list had been scored and ranked using a formula based on citation zones from the original eighteen mapping studies. Original plans for the NAHRS list included ranking the titles on the new NAHRS list. However, the mapping studies were becoming out of date, and the other resources used to rank the journals have not been updated. Therefore, a ranking of journal titles no longer seemed appropriate. J Med Lib Assoc 102(2) April 2014

NAHRS/lnternational Academy of Nurse Editors (INANE) survey data

To make the journal list more useful to nurses seeking publication opportunities, nursing editors were surveyed about editorial practices. From 20092011, the NAHRS journal project team and INANE conducted a collaborative survey regarding peerreview practices, style requirements (MLA, American Psychological Association [APA], etc.), number of manuscripts submitted annually, acceptance rates, time to publication, and acceptance of articles written by only nursing authors. Based on success of the earlier INANE/MLA collaboration [29], the survey was developed in collaboration with INANE, and a link was distributed via their email distribution list with a link to the web survey on the INANE and the NAHRS websites. Data from the survey were added to the journal list and results shared with INANE and MLA members [30-32]. Despite repeated mailing list requests, data were obtained for just ninety-one tifies. 107

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OUTCOMES

The database coverage data were completed in May of 2012, published as a web document, and announced at the MLA annual meeting. A link to the journal list was placed on the NAHRS website. The list's completion was announced via MLA-FOCUS, NAHRS, MEDLIB-L, and other relevant email distribution lists. The list introduction identified team members, history of the list, and data sources used for each database. The final 2012 journal list included 212 titles, with descriptive data provided; 211 of these had a journal home page (99.53%). For journal titles, the list had 122 (57.55%) association publications, with 101 of these titles available online as a member benefit. Ninety-two (43.40%) of the journals used APA for their manuscript style, but several other styles were used: American Medical Association 44 (20.75%), Harvard 23 (10.85%), Vancouver 15 (7.08%), and others. Coverage of titles in subject indexes ranged from CINAHL Plus indexing 211 of the titles (99.53%), CINAHL 209 titles (98.58%), Mosby's Index/EMCare 205 titles (96.70%), MEDLINE 186 titles (87.74%), and Embase 177 titles (83.50%). The British Nursing Index, a limited index of UK nursing titles, included only 84 of the journal list's titles (39.62%). Citation index coverage ranged from Scopus with 203 titles (95.75%), followed by CINAHL and CINAHL Plus with 191 of the titles (90.09%) and Web of Science with data for only 83 (39.15%) titles. Information from the editor survey is available for the 91 journals responding to the INANE survey. Table 2 (online only) identifies the top 30 journals by number and by percentage of research articles. A summary of fields on the 2012 NAHRS Selected List of Nursing Journals appears in Table 3 (online only). Descriptive information and database coverage is provided for all 212 journals with evidence-based content calculated for the 211 indexed in CINAHL Plus. LESSONS LEARNED

The cochairs spent considerable time verifying title changes and the years in which they occurred, using NLM Locator, WorldCat, Ulrich's, journal home pages, and any journal histories that could be located. Creating the Hst took twenty-seven months, but the authors feel confident that the information represents the most comprehensive list of nursing journal title chcinges and dates in existence. The original process of gathering information from a large number of volunteers on just a few titles required extensive rechecking of and revision to data to ensure consistency and reiiability. Others undertaking similar projects may want to consider using a smaller project team to ensure consistency in format and overall accuracy. Distributing the data gathering and inputting by field rather than by journal would reduce the time needed to complete a field. This would allow the cochairs to more easily determine if specific team members required additional direction in accuracy or formatting of the information. The use of an online 108

format is more fluid and easier to revise, update, or correct. However, those undertaking similar projects should consider that some institutions do not allow access to Google products, which may limit the use of lists such as this one in some settings. The project cochairs have received numerous requests for a printable version of the journal list but have not determined a manner to produce a list that has print large enough to read and is reasonable in regard to the number of pages to print. Privacy settings for the document were changed so that anyone with access to Google Drive can download and use the list offline as a spreadsheet but not revise or update it online. At this time, additional availability of the list in other formats is being considered. CONCLUSION The NAHRS 2012 Selected List of Nursing Journals Project was much more complex and time consuming than originally anticipated by the team. The methodology developed during the project makes it easier to expand and update the list as journal publication information and database indexing changes. Based upon the lessons learned, future updates should take considerably less time and effort than was required for the creation of the original list. The project team believes that the project was worthwhile and should be continued in the future because this list contains some unique features and information that is not available elsewhere. This project could also serve as a model for other disciplines to develop similar lists. REFERENCES 1. Hill DR, Stickle HR. Brandon/Hill selected list of print nursing books and journals. Nurs Outlook. 2002 May;50 (3):100-13. 2. American Journal of Nursing book of the year award program, 2013 [Internet]. Wolter Kluwers Health I Lippincott Williams & Wilkins [cited 24 Oct 2013]. . 3. Doody's Core Titles: history [Internet]. Doody Enterprises; 2013 [cited 24 Oct 2013]. . 4. Research Committee Journal Project Team of the Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section, Medical Library Association. 2012 NAHRS selected list of nursing journals: introduction [Intemetj. The Section [rev 2012; cited 20 Nov 2013]. . 5. Research Committee Journal Project Team of the Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section, Medical Library Association. 2012 NAHRS select list of nursing journals: introduction: chart [Internet]. The Section [rev 2012; cited 20 Nov 2013]. . 6. Allen M. Key and electronic nursing journals: characteristics and database coverage: introduction [Internet]. 2001 ed. Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section, Medical Library Association [cited 19 Sep 2013]. . J Med Lib Assoc 102(2) Aprii 2014

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7. AUen M. Key and electronic nursing journals: characteristics and database coverage, chart [Intemet]. 2001 ed. Nursing and AUied Health Resources Section, Medical Library Association [cited 19 Sep 2013]. . 8. McCloskey JC, Swanson E. Publishing opportunities for nurses: a comparison of 65 journals. Nurs Educ. 1977 JulAug;2(4):4-13. 9. McCloskey JC. Publishing opportunities for nurses: a comparison of 100 journals. Image (IN). 1982 Jun;14(2):50-6. 10. Swanson EA, McCloskey JC. Publishing opportimities for nurses. Nurs Outlook. 1986 Sep-Oct;34(5):227-35. 11. Swanson EA, McCloskey JC, Bodensteiner A. Publishing opportunities for nurses: a comparison of 92 U.S. journals. Image J Nurs Sch. 1991 Spring;23(l):33-8. 12. Allen M. Key and electronic nursing journals: characteristics and database coverage. Cinahl Information Systems; 2007. 13. Allen M. Electrorüc resources to support the Ontario nursing baccalaureate program (OLRN) [report]. Ontario Learning Resources for Nursing; June 2001. 14. Allen M, Jacobs SK, Levy JR. Mapping the literature of nursing: 1996-2000. J Med Lib Assoc. 2006 Apr;94(2):206-20. (Available from: . [cited 1 Jan 2014].) 15. Allen M, Levy JR. Mapping the general literature of American nursing. J Med Lib Assoc. 2006 Apr;94(2 suppl):E43-8. (Available from:

Developing an evidence-based list of journals for nursing.

The Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section (NAHRS) of the Medical Library Association created the 2012 NAHRS Selected List of Nursing Journals to...
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