October 2017 April 2016 | Page 17

Te Puawai
Because of their function as broad-brush summary of a topic, and subsequent utility as
pedagogical aid, they result in high citation counts, which in turn result in high bibliometric ranking:
a measure of status in contemporary academe. Unabashedly, most nursing journals recruit the
review, knowing full-well its ability to influence the field, and reap benefits for the journal.
The review article is a criterion by which nursing defines itself and its priorities: those subjects
worthy of review. In a Bourdieuan framework, the review is part of the cultural field or the “series of
institutions, rules, rituals, conventions, categories, designations, appointments and titles which
constitute an objective hierarchy, and which produce and authorise certain discourses and
activities”.[22, p21]
When one looks at the discursive construction of the review article, in any of a number of
contemporary nursing journals, one is confronted by the dominant and unwavering presence of
evidence based practice. Instructions to authors include the mandatory use of sub-titles such as
“design,” “methods,” “quality appraisal,” “data abstraction,” “synthesis” and “results.” Links to useful
resources point authors exclusively to QUORUM statements, Cochrane Collaborations, EPPI,
NICE and other EBP-based assessment tools. There is a salient absence of references to the
academic traditions of reading and writing, promoting the systematic review as the standard to
which nursing authors should aspire.
The language used these journals is the kind that MacLure[23] describes as a mix of scientific
positivism and audit culture rhetoric, reifying the way in which texts must be approached. As
MacLure so aptly represents, what is left unspoken in the discursive representation of the
systematic review are the important themes of analysis and interpretation. The lexicon privileges
audit over textuality, reproducibility over illumination. She describes the, ...fantasy of a text-free
knowledge economy, where nuggets of evidence can be extracted from the rhetorical
contaminations of persuasion, argument, justification, context and partiality that are inherent in all
texts ... an ancient and persistent delusion.[23 p399]
Journal content in our discipline reflects either the supreme position of the systematic review within
the profession, or more likely, the impact that journal policies have in shaping that which the
profession judges worthy of publication. Journals have significant power to mould what they
contain, even more so now in the day of manuscript management software which includes required
form fields that an author cannot skip: an abstract must be structured, a method identified, an
article category designated. But beyond the mechanics of manuscript control, the more powerful
the journal, the more powerful its ability to influence the presentation and even the epistemologies
of nursing knowledge. And, the power of the journal is also based in the review article.
With research evaluation exercises, and performance-based research funding, the impact factor of
a journal (already a positivistic/problematic bibliometric category) constitutes its cultural capital.
The more the journal’s content is cited, the higher its impact factor.a The higher its impact factor,
the more submissions it is likely to receive, and the higher the quality of the resultant publication.
Nursing researchers become compliant docile subjects as they conform to journal standards which
“other” traditional ways of treating the synthesis of research material. Reporting methodology-including tables to organise “evidence,” and presenting a range of justifications of trustworthiness,
from methodological algorithms to quality assessment tables, and detailed search criteria--confirms
inflexible bonds within which nursing is compelling its academics to reflect.
© Te Puawai

College of Nurses Aotearoa (NZ) Inc
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