Pre-registration psychiatric nursing education, in the Republic of Ireland, has recently moved to a 4-year degree programme, with the first cohort of psychiatric nursing graduants graduating in 2006. In addition, a number of other policy initiatives have taken place that will have a significant impact on psychiatric nursing practice, education and research activity. To provide a baseline for future benchmarking and evaluation, the year 2005 seemed an appropriate time to reflect on and record publications by psychiatric nurses in the Republic of Ireland. This article reports the findings of a study undertaken to identify psychiatric nursing publications in peer-reviewed journals, with a view to establishing trends in publication, such as the type of publication, subject area and journal type. Emerging trends are identified and discussed in light of concurrent changes in psychiatric nursing and mental health care, and suggestions are made for future development of publication capacity.