Bibliometric awareness in nursing scholarship: Can we afford to ignore it any longer?

In contemporary nursing academia, it is unthinkable that topics such as research methods, evidence-based practice, and the translation of research into practice would be omitted from nursing curricula at any level. What is surprising, however, is that despite a broad educational emphasis on “teaching research”, the rising importance of bibliometrics appears to have been largely neglected. If nursing scholarship and nursing scholars are to prosper in the highly competitive field of modern health research, a sophisticated understanding of citation-based methods is clearly required. Armed with this knowledge, one can more successfully argue why scarce research funding, that might otherwise be channeled elsewhere, ought to be assigned to nursing researchers. We hereby urge readers to reflect on the extent to which bibliometrics is covered within formal nursing curricula at their college or university. It is no longer a case of if a graduate nurse will need this skill set for their future professional development, but when.