Can scholarship in nursing/midwifery education result in a successful research career?

In a recent editorial, we examined the research outputs of 150 Australian nursing and midwifery professors (McKenna et al., 2018) identifying publication metrics on par with, and sometimes above those of professors in the UK (Watson, McDonagh, & Thompson, 2017). Because global university rankings are heavily weighted towards research, there has been pressure on universities and on academics to maximize research performance (Nguyen, Rambaldi, & Tang, 2017). Although many Australian universities have increasingly focused on education delivery, and despite the need for a strong evidence base for learning and teaching, academics are often cautioned against focusing too heavily on educational research. As a group of collaborative educational researchers (www.esscollaborative.org/), this led us to consider whether a focus on educational research may limit or enhance an academic career.