Research publication performance of Australian Professors of Nursing & Midwifery

Professors of nursing and midwifery are recognized as discipline leaders and thus have a key role to play in the development of disciplinary knowledge, especially through their research activity. Watson and Thompson (2008) paraphrased the research and scholarship roles of the professoriate, from the UK National Conference of University Professors, as a requirement to “maintain individual authoritative industry in scholarship and research” (p 981). This prompts us to ask: Are Australian nursing and midwifery professors leading the way in research? Mindful of the recent report on UK nursing professors’ citations and h-indices (Watson, McDonagh, & Thompson, 2017), we examined the research outputs of Australian nursing and midwifery professors. We grouped the disciplines as research outputs are listed together in research performance assessments. Position descriptions for senior academic nursing and midwifery appointments globally have a strong focus on conduct of research. For example, a professor's main responsibilities include: “to develop the research activities of the university” (University of Surrey, 2016) or to “drive globally competitive research …” (University of Newcastle, 2017). Institutional research profiles are assessed in Australian universities using the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) exercise developed by the Australian Research Council (ARC, 2016a). In addition to the annual Higher Education Research Data Collection (which is used by the government to allocate funding), the ERA process requires itemized data for research outputs, income, full time equivalent staff, esteem measures, patents and research commercialization classified according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Field of Research (FOR) classification scheme. The FOR code “Nursing” includes the discipline of midwifery and hence we consider the disciplinary contributions together. In the last ERA round, 876.4 FTE positions yielded research income of over AU$115 million, and research outputs totalling 4,977. Most were journal articles (94%); the remaindering consisting of book chapters (3%), conference papers (1%) and non-traditional research outputs (NTRO) (1%) (Australian Research Council, 2016a). The performance of 19 institutions achieved the highest possible ranking (a score of 5 “above world standard”) in the Nursing Field of Research. Thus, from both institutional and disciplinary perspectives, it is important to understand the research publication output of the Australian nursing and midwifery professoriate. The h-index has been proposed as a measure of publication productivity and impact (Hirsch, 2005). This aims to measure the cumulative impact of a researcher's lifetime publication output through the number of citations achieved in relation to a set of the individual's most cited articles. If an author has 10 publications and each of these is cited 10 or more times, the h-index is 10. It does not collect citations for lesser cited articles (“one-hit wonders”) and corrects for uncited papers. Any additional citations over the recorded volume are also disregarded. It relates to journal articles alone, and not books, conference papers or other media. Thus, it provides a focused snapshot of an author's journalistic works based on quality and quantity, Hunt and Cleary (2010). The h-index has shown considerable reliability when tested in various settings (Bormann & Daniel, 2007). Both the Web of Science and SCOPUS have been used as appropriate search engines for reviewing the h-index of nursing researchers. In 2011, Hunt et al. published a ranking of Australian nursing researchers who had an h-index of 10 or more, based on the SCOPUS database. These 24 nurses had a mean h-index of 14.17 and a range of citations from 283 to over 4600. Latterly, in the UK, Watson et al. (2017) found the median h-index for Professors of Nursing was 12 (mean = 12.66) with the highest being 39, accessed via Web of Science. Prior to this, a survey of 16 leading UK nursing professors’ publications in 2010 revealed an h-index mean of 11 (Thompson & Watson, 2010). In Canada, a 2009 survey of the top 20 nursing academics publishing research found that h-indices ranged from 14 to 23 (Hack, Crooks, Plohman, & Kepron, 2010). Although no overall data were presented, these authors concluded that an h-index of between 10–14 represented an “excellent” research record, while an h-index over 15 was an “exceptional” record in nursing. Australian nursing/midwifery professorial appointments in October 2016 were identified through their respective institutional web profiles and then searched by author using the SCOPUS database (SCOPUS was selected as it is the database used in data collection for ERA). The total number of citations of each individual, and the h-index (including self- citations) as of October 2016 were recorded, together with brief demographics (qualifications, sex and employment). A secondary search was also made for the records of Australian Associate Professors. Data were analysed using summary statistics (means, median and interquartile range) and independent t tests. The sample comprised 150 professors of nursing employed in substantive appointments in 34 Australian universities and one vocational college. We excluded one professor whose substantive appointment appeared to be in the USA and a further vocational college was identified that did not employ at professorial level. Most were female (86%) and most professors held a doctoral qualification (88%), while there was no difference in publication rates between females and males. The number of authored publications ranged from 2 to 436, and the median h-index was 14 (Table 1). There were 33 professors with an h-index of between 10-13, indicative of a good level of research productivity, according to categories suggested by Hack et al. (2010). 25:41 50:69 75:98 25:308 50:677 75:1,124 25:10 50:14 75:19 We further categorized results using the interquartile range, which indicated that 84 professors achieved a high level of performance, being in the top two quartiles. Furthermore, 46 achieved an excellent h-index of 14–18, and 38 achieved an outstanding h-index between 19 and 33. This indicates significant escalation in performance since 2010 (Hack et al., 2010). Publication performance data for Australian associate professors (n = 100) were also collected in a similar fashion. This revealed a lesser publication record with a median of 26 publications (range 1–256), median 176 citations, and median h-index of 7 (range 1–24). Six associates had no h-index. Thus, we suggest the Australian h-index and range for professors compares well with UK measures (mean = 12.66; range 0–39)—also from 2016 (Watson et al., 2017). The current results indicate that most of the Australian nursing professoriate are making a strong contribution to research publication productivity. We recognize, however, that there are limitations in our approach as sampling may not have captured professors in nursing and midwifery who have wider institutional roles and thus are not identified by discipline or represented on school web pages. Furthermore, we were unable to distinguish between types of professorial appointments (teaching and research, research only or teaching focused) or assess research performance relative to appointment type. We also acknowledge that citation rates and the h-index are blunted measures and can, for example, be increased through self-citations. However, Hunt, Jackson, Watson, and Thompson (2011) suggested that this has a negligible effect of around a one-point increase. Furthermore, citations are influenced by career length, they never reduce and thus retired professors maintain their citation rates, while new appointees need time in the chair to build research outputs and citations. This temporal relationship aside, there are a group of professors whose research outputs are negligible. This finding may be an artefact of poor reporting of outputs, although the institutional benefit of ensuring accurate reporting for ERA would suggest that this is not the case. Furthermore, these professors would be included in FTE staff ratios in determining institutional performance. What this does suggest is that some professorial appointments are not research dependent and are based on other capabilities, perhaps relating to teaching and administration or NTRO or other impact measures unrelated to research performance. A broader framework of research performance measures is currently being developed and piloted as a companion to ERA in Australia. This will examine “how universities are translating their research into economic, social and other benefits and encourage greater collaboration between universities, industries and other end-users of research” (Australian Research Council, 2016b). This national assessment follows the UK Research Excellence Framework initiative in highlighting translational impacts of research. The disciplines of nursing and midwifery may well be more aligned to demonstrating research impact in this way. The next challenge for the professoriate will be in evidencing this performance. Australian nursing and midwifery professors are in the top two quartiles of research productivity when measured by the h-index, with “excellent” and “outstanding” research records. Research performance appears to be well within international bounds and reflects well on the research leadership of the Australian professoriate.

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