  177 neutron spectroscopic factors for nickel isotopes have been extracted by
performing a systematic analysis of the angular distributions measured from
(d,p) transfer reactions. A subset of the extracted spectroscopic factors are
compared to predictions of large-basis shell models in the full pf model space
using the GXPF1A effective interaction, and the (f5/2, p3/2, p1/2, g9/2) model
space using the JJ4PNA interaction. For ground states, the predicted
spectroscopic factors using the GXPF1A effective interaction in the full pf
model space agree very well with the experimental values, while predictions
based on several other effective interactions and model spaces are about 30%
higher than the experimental values. For low-energy excited states (<3.5 MeV),
the agreement between the extracted spectroscopic factors and shell model
calculations is not better than a factor of two.
