2. Results
In our sample we extracted altogether 332 articles. The descriptive analysis of basic
bibliographic demographics is shown in Table 1 and the number of papers per year in
Figure 1. The large standard deviations presented in Table 1 reveals the great diversity
between papers in the number of citations and the number of references. Additionally,
we found out that average age of references is quite old, more than 11 years. From the
Figure 1 it is quite obvious that in general the total number of published papers on
nursing informatics competencies was increasing till the year 2008; however after that
year the number of published papers dropped and stayed more or less constant after
that drop. Looking at the other two curves representing the number of published papers
in the United States (US) and the number of papers published in the rest of the world, it
is interesting to note that after 2007 there were more papers published in the US than in
the rest of the world together, but in comparison, the trends of the number of published
papers are opposite – in the US the trend after 2007 is negative, and the trend in the rest
of the world is positive. This contradiction is probably due to new countries publishing
in the area of nursing informatics (Brazil, India) and the increasing production ofpapers in Taiwan. Another interesting observation is that in spite of the leadership of
the US in the paper production on nursing informatics competencies, the first published
paper did not appear there, but in Denmark. Despite changing trend and differences
between US and the rest of the world, the Pearson correlation between publishing year
and the number of published papers (Total, US, Rest of the world) is significant (p