Nursing Wiki

Nursing Journals

This is a directory of the main peer-reviewed journals in American nursing, grouped by field. Each entry gives the publisher and the international standard serial number, which is the durable way to find a journal when a publisher changes its web address, as they frequently do.

Every title, publisher and number below was checked against the Crossref registry on 9 September 2026. Publisher websites block automated checking almost universally, so this page gives identifiers rather than links to them.

General and research

  • American Journal of Nursing. Wolters Kluwer. ISSN 0002-936X. The oldest continuously published nursing journal in the United States.
  • Nursing Outlook. Elsevier. ISSN 0029-6554. The journal of the American Academy of Nursing.
  • Journal of Nursing Scholarship. Wiley. ISSN 1527-6546. Published for Sigma.
  • Journal of Advanced Nursing. Wiley. ISSN 0309-2402.
  • Journal of Clinical Nursing. Wiley. ISSN 0962-1067.
  • International Journal of Nursing Studies. Elsevier. ISSN 0020-7489.
  • Research in Nursing and Health. Wiley. Research methods and findings across nursing science.
  • Nursing Inquiry. Wiley. ISSN 1320-7881. Critical and theoretical work.
  • International Nursing Review. Wiley. ISSN 0020-8132. Published for the International Council of Nurses.
  • Advances in Nursing Science. Wolters Kluwer. ISSN 0161-9268. See nursing theory.
  • Nursing Science Quarterly. SAGE. ISSN 0894-3184.
  • Nursing Ethics. SAGE. ISSN 0969-7330. See nursing ethics.

Open access

Three titles are worth knowing for readers without a university subscription.

  • BMC Nursing. Springer, BioMed Central. ISSN 1472-6955. Fully open access.
  • Nursing Open. Wiley. ISSN 2054-1058. Fully open access.
  • Journal of Nursing Management. ISSN 0966-0429. Moved to an open access model under Hindawi and Wiley.
  • The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, published by the American Nurses Association, is free to read at ojin.nursingworld.org.

Most other journals list an author-pays open access option, and many articles are deposited in the free national biomedical archive after an embargo, which is the practical route to a paywalled paper.

Education

  • Nurse Education Today. Elsevier. ISSN 0260-6917.
  • Journal of Nursing Education. SLACK. ISSN 0148-4834.
  • Nursing Education Perspectives. Wolters Kluwer. ISSN 1536-5026. The journal of the National League for Nursing.
  • Journal of Professional Nursing. Elsevier. ISSN 8755-7223. The journal of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.
  • Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing. SLACK. ISSN 0022-0124.

See the nurse faculty shortage and nurse residency programs.

Leadership, quality and regulation

  • The Journal of Nursing Administration. Wolters Kluwer. ISSN 0002-0443.
  • Nursing Administration Quarterly. Wolters Kluwer. ISSN 0363-9568.
  • Nurse Leader. Elsevier. ISSN 1541-4612.
  • Journal of Nursing Care Quality. Wolters Kluwer. ISSN 1057-3631.
  • Journal of Nursing Regulation. Elsevier. ISSN 2155-8256. Published by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing and the source of the national workforce survey.
  • Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing. Wiley. ISSN 1545-102X. Published for Sigma.
  • Evidence-Based Nursing. BMJ. ISSN 1367-6539.
  • CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing. Wolters Kluwer. ISSN 1538-2931.

Acute, critical and emergency care

  • American Journal of Critical Care. AACN Publishing. ISSN 1062-3264.
  • Critical Care Nurse. AACN Publishing. ISSN 0279-5442. Both are journals of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses.
  • Journal of Emergency Nursing. Elsevier. ISSN 0099-1767. The journal of the Emergency Nurses Association.
  • Journal of PeriAnesthesia Nursing. Elsevier. ISSN 1089-9472.
  • AORN Journal. Wiley. ISSN 0001-2092. The journal of AORN.

Population and specialty

  • Oncology Nursing Forum. ISSN 1538-0688, and Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing. ISSN 1538-067X. Both published by the Oncology Nursing Society.
  • Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic and Neonatal Nursing, published for AWHONN.
  • Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health, published for the American College of Nurse-Midwives.
  • The Journal of School Nursing. SAGE. ISSN 1059-8405. Published for the National Association of School Nurses.
  • Journal of Pediatric Nursing. Elsevier. ISSN 0882-5963.
  • Journal of Gerontological Nursing. SLACK. ISSN 0098-9134.
  • Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association. SAGE. ISSN 1078-3903.
  • Journal of Neuroscience Nursing. Wolters Kluwer. ISSN 0888-0395.
  • Rehabilitation Nursing. Wolters Kluwer. ISSN 0278-4807.
  • Journal of Forensic Nursing. Wolters Kluwer. ISSN 1556-3693.
  • Journal of Hospice and Palliative Nursing, the journal of the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association.
  • Nephrology Nursing Journal, published by the American Nephrology Nurses Association.
  • Public Health Nursing. Wiley. ISSN 0737-1209.
  • Journal of Transcultural Nursing. SAGE. ISSN 1043-6596.

How to read the literature without a subscription

Four practical routes. The national biomedical archive holds free full text for a large share of nursing research, particularly work funded by federal grants. Many authors post accepted manuscripts in their university repository. Professional association membership usually includes that association's journal, which is often the cheapest legitimate access to a specialty literature. And a public library card frequently carries database access that includes nursing titles.

The reason to bother is that most claims about nursing, including the ones on this wiki, trace to a handful of these journals. The staffing and mortality studies that underpin nurse staffing and patient outcomes appeared in general medical journals, but the replication, the measurement work and the arguments about method are in the titles above.

Sources

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