Content Analysis of Articles Published in the Nursing and Midwifery Journals of Iranian Universities of Medical Sciences

The journal articles published in the Iranian journals are valuable resources for nurses and midwives. This article aimed to analyze the content of the articles published in the nursing and midwifery journals of Iranian universities of medical sciences. In this cross-sectional descriptive study, 565 articles published during 2005-2007 in the 20 Iranian nursing and midwifery journals were collected. Data were collected using a checklist and were presented using descriptive statistics in the SPSS-16. Most articles were published equally in nursing classification (12/4%) and miscellaneous articles (12/4%). Most of the articles were conducted using descriptive methodologies. The most cited subjects were nursing education (20%) and pregnancy (16.6%) in the nursing and midwifery subheadings, respectively. The Magiran database indexed the most nursing and midwifery articles. There were few scientific nursing and midwifery journals published by the medical sciences universities. A majority of the articles published in the nursing and midwifery universities were related to other medical fields. It seems that there should be a distinct publishing policy in nursing and midwifery journals. Creating a specific database for indexing nursing and midwifery articles is recommended.