Publicity in Spanish nursing journals

Abstract

Introduction. Although all periodic scientific publications contain publicity to some extent, in some of them there is so much advertising that scientific contents take a second place. In fact, there is a correlation between the quality of a scientific journal and the number and location of adverts. However, there is little research on the subject in our field. Therefore our aim was to find out more about publicity in Spanish nursing journals, as one more indicative of the social activity of a science. Material and method. Eight nursing journals from 1996 were selected. The studied variables were: advertised product or service, number of adverts, extent (number of pages) and contamination (number of adverts within the scientific text and correlation with the contents). Results. 649 adverts were identified. Extent percentage was 17,90 %. Pharmaceutical and clinical products were the most advertised- 246 adverts (38%). The journals with a more contaminated scientific content were Rol de Enfermería (193 adverts), Revista de la Asociación Española de Enfermería en Urología (47 adverts) and Index enfermería (30 adverts). Qualitative differences were significant regarding adverts characteristics among the journals. Discussion. Nursing journals have a low rate of publicity compared to medical ones, which acts in favour of the quality of the nursing ones. Half of the adverts are a source of funding for the editors. Six of the eight reviewed journals place adverts in the middle of the scientific text, which hinders reading and reduces the quality. Eventually, we highly recommend editors to avoid non-ethic practises such as correlating the article content with the advertised product. We also recommend to watch carefully the number of adverts, because scientific credit is impaired.

Keywords

• Publicidad
• Revistas de enfermería
• Revistas científicas
• Producción científica