A qualitative study of the factors influencing the submission for publication of research undertaken by students

Summary there is general agreement that research capacity in nursing needs to be increased, there has not been a great deal of attention paid to the possibility of increasing publications by students of research undertaken for dissertations. This is potentially a useful way of increasing the evidence base in nursing. This paper reports a qualitative study undertaken in a School of Nursing in the UK, where supervisors (n = 10), students who had published a paper based on their dissertations (n = 10), and students who had not published were interviewed (n = 10). The findings show that while there is a great deal of enthusiasm for publishing students’ work from both students and supervisors, a variety of factors determine whether or not an individual dissertation leads on to a submission for publication. These factors are discussed, and recommendations are made to increase the number of this type of submissions.