Every-one's business, no-one's responsibility; reporting clinical academic research activity by nurses in the United Kingdom.

Gathering a complete data set on the clinical academic research activity of nurses in the United Kingdom is presently not possible. The broad range of funding and development agencies, the scholarship awarding bodies and the individual endeavours of nurses are difficult to bring together in a meaningful way. This paper offers an account of the emerging research landscape in the United Kingdom and the devolved nations and provides examples of the research profiles of nurses that illustrates the dispersed nature of nurse activity data. This paper ends by suggesting a solution to data collection based on one of the recently offered recommendations of the United Kingdom Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC) in its report ‘Developing the Best Research Professionals’ (2006), and suggests two first steps in developing a strategic approach to making data more complete, useful and accessible