A Citation Analysis of Scholarly Journals in Communication Studies

Lisa Romero 505 A Citation Analysis of Scholarly Journals in 18.3. Communication Studies portal Lisa Romero publication, abstract: Using citation analysis, this study identifies the most relevant journals in communication studies. The study analyzes citations from a representative list of 116 forjournals from subject areas within communication studies over a 30-year period and addresses research interests throughout the discipline. Results indicate that most journals cited in the literature were outside communication studies. This study provides an inclusive picture of where communication studies research is published by detailing the most-cited journals and provides evidence-based recommendations for collection management. accepted and Introduction edited, hrinking library budgets, increasing costs of library materials, and growing demand for resourcescopy challenge librarians to maintain robust scholarly journal collections to support research efforts in the university. These challenges are es- Specially steep in multidisciplinary areas such as communication studies. Communica- tions librarians must keep abreast of resources and maintain collections within several primary Communications librarians areas, includingreviewed, advertising, communication, must keep abreast of resources journalism, media, and public relations, as well peeras other subject areas, such as marketing, and maintain collections politicalis science, psychology, and sociology. within several primary areas, These librarians must stretch their budgets to including advertising, commu- mss.afford new resources (books and new journal subscriptions); to continue to pay for subscrip- nication, journalism, media, tions to dynamic resources (periodicals and on- and public relations This line databases); and to cover the cost of inflation and price increases. portal: Libraries and the Academy, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2018), pp. 505–534. Copyright © 2018 by Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD 21218. 506 A Citation Analysis of Scholarly Journals in Communication Studies Library collections vary in size and scope, as do the focus of departments and universities. Some departments include within their focus all the subject areas within communication studies; others concentrate on a select few. This difference in scope often influences library collections. This study provides data and insights that are useful for communication studies librarians, represents a comprehensive view of the subject areas within the field, provides a representative selection of journals within the subject areas, and evaluates seven “slices” or years of data during a 30-year span of scholarship. As a collection manager in an Association of Research Libraries (ARL) library at a 18.3. large public research institution, the author is responsible for collection management in communication studies, including collections in advertising, communication, journalism, and media and public relations. As a result, she approaches collection developmentportal with a broad and inclusive perspective. Her focus includes five major subject areas within communication studies and provides a wide view of the management of journal collections. This inclusive perspective takes into consideration the goals of a variety of libraries, enabling librarians with different users, budgets, collections, and foci to make informed collection decisions that reflect and support the teaching andpublication, research mission of their institutions. for Librarians often approach collection development based on tacit knowledge, such as familiarity with a subject area gained from working with the collection, assisting scholars, and previous collection development experience. Librarians also make decisions based on recommendations by faculty; a resource’s price or publisher;accepted select publishers’ catalogs or lists; and reviews. These are widely practiced The decision to select or retain a methodsand of decision-making in collection journal based solely on its price development. However, with diminishing budgets and a seemingly unlimited number or publisher may not reflect of resources available for purchase, librarians edited, researchers’ interests or needs. need additional data reflecting patrons’ collection use. The decision to select or retain a copy journal based solely on its price or publisher may not reflect researchers’ interests or needs. Conducting collection development sub- jectively, without evidence-based data, may be vulnerable to publisher marketing and often neglects important concerns of overall collection development, disciplinary trends, and duplicationreviewed, of resources. Evidence-based data that reflect which resources users rely upon in their research can help librarians make sound collection development decisions. peer is Literature Review According to Peggy Johnson, collection analysis provides librarians with increased mss.knowledge of library collections so that they can measure the strength of a library’s holdings and develop and manage them effectively.1 Thomas Nisonger discusses several This methods of acquiring data through collection analysis: subjective judgment by disciplinary experts; usage; coverage by abstracting and indexing services; overlapping library holdings or subscriptions; and citation data.2 A commonly used method employed by librarians since 1927 is conducting citation studies or citation analysis to determine a journal’s importance in the field.3 According to Nisonger, citation analysis is based on Lisa Romero 507 the assumption that if a researcher has cited a resource, he or she must have somehow used the item in the research process.4 Citation analyses are accomplished by examining how often and where scholars cite journals in their research. One method of citation analysis is to examine citations from a single or a few journal titles identified as the “core” journal or journals in a field for one or more years. Ac- cording to Johnson, developing a list of source items that reflect the subject studied or user needs can be challenging. It is important that the source list reflects the scope of the subject area. However, using one or a few “core” journals is a time-saving method 18.3. of citation analysis to provide important collection management insight.5 As a time-saving alternative, librarians conduct citation analyses using Scopus, Elsevier’s index of abstracts and citations from peer-reviewed journals, or Web of portalSci- ence, a database of scientific citations maintained by Clarivate Analytics, to identify citations from publications used by researchers at their universities.6 However, teaching and research faculties at different universities have different research foci, so the insight gained from these studies may be less relevant for librarians at other universities. Steve Black advises that, when using these two databases, one should rememberpublication, that they do not include all journals published in particular disciplines, so thefor resulting data may not be a true representation of scholarship.7 A more inclusive process used by Wenli Gao (in communication), Sarah Anne Murphy (in the sciences), and Gregory Youngen (in veterinary medicine) samples numerous journals, eliminating the challenge of selecting the one journal that represents the scope of the subjectaccepted area. Other times, librarians will examine citations culled from publications of researchers 8 at their universities to assess if the library isand meeting their needs. As in the sampling of faculty publications from Scopus or Web of Science, the citation data reflect the research focus from a department or university and may have less applicability to libraries at other universities. Within the discipline of communicationedited, studies, librarians have conducted citation analyses and content analysis for a variety of purposes. To examine interdisciplinary influences on the field of copycommunication, Lauren Wispe and Candice Osborn compared citation patterns among disciplines related to communication by examining citations from four communication journals from 1953 to 1977.9 Byron Reeves and Christine Borgman addressed the communication subject area by sampling the nine most important journalsreviewed, within the field from 1975 to 1979 to evaluate their influences on one another and on journals outside the field.10 Using the Journal of Communication, Han Woo Park and communication studies peer Loet Leydesdorff analyzed journals in an effort to scholarship relies heavily mapis communication research.11 In fact, Park and Leydesdorff used a methodology almost the reverse on social and experimental mss.of that used in this study but arrived at some of the psychology literature. same findings. Using 2006 data in the Journal Cita- This tion Reports, which covers journals in the natural and social sciences, Park and Leydesdorff analyzed the journals that cited a single journal, the Journal of Communication. The author’s study, in contrast, examined the communication studies literature from 116 journals to ascertain what scholars in the field use in their research. These two studies both conclude that communication studies scholarship 508 A Citation Analysis of Scholarly Journals in Communication Studies relies heavily on social and experimental psychology literature. The Wispe and Osborn, Reeves and Borgman, and Park and Leydesdorff studies examined the subject area of communication during the periods 1953–1977, 1975–1979, and 2006. Daniel Riffe and Alan Freitag investigated how content

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