Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p> <underline>Objective:</underline> Nurses remain underrepresented in the clinical academic workforce despite strong motivation to integrate research into their careers, potentially due to unclear routes into career pathways. This scoping review aimed to map the existing literature on clinical academic programmes for nurses, identifying key concepts, evidence sources, and research gaps. <underline>Design:</underline> Scoping review <underline>Data sources:</underline> CINAHL, Amed, Medline, ProQuest databases were searched in March 2023, with additional and grey literature searching with no date restrictions. The search was updated in May 2025. <underline>Eligibility criteria:</underline> Publications reporting clinical academic development opportunities open to early career nurses globally were included, as well as literature addressing these opportunities from a strategic level. <underline>Results:</underline> We identified 5681 records and included 99 articles which met inclusion criteria. Included publications spanned from 1993 to 2025 and were concentrated in the United States and United Kingdom. Most studies used descriptive designs, such as qualitative evaluations or case reports, with limited use of mixed-methods. A key findings was that the dissemination of clinical academic training programmes was not clearly reported, suggesting a lack of equitable awareness. Additionally, the level of support from managers required to enable clinical academic progression was not well defined. Furthermore, mentorship and supervision were noted as a core component for clinical academic training, but there is no explicit description of the role or nature. <underline>Conclusion:</underline> Further work is needed to understand the context in which decisions are made in terms of clinical academic workforces, in terms of sources of funding, resources allocation, motivations and drivers </p>