The Evolution of Research in Journalism and Communication: An Analysis of Scholarly CIOS-Indexed Journals From 1915 to Present

Abstract

Assessments of programmatic research remain important in the current higher education landscape, as the field of Journalism & Mass Communication (JMC) enters its second century. This study profiles scholarly productivity across the larger discipline’s first century, focusing on scholarly output for institutions in referred journals indexed by the Communication Institute for Online Scholarship (CIOS) database since 1915. The 30 most prolific scholars all have at least a decade of experience and typically publish with a coauthor. All but four of the 30 most prolific units grant doctoral degrees. Implications of converging research areas wrought by emerging digital media—and their erasure of the field’s sub-domains—are discussed.

Keywords

assessment content analysis Journalism & Mass Communication Programs program evaluation quantitative research

Introduction

As the field of Journalism & Mass Communication (JMC) enters its second century, studies of programmatic and institutional quality are assuming greater importance in the current higher education landscape (e.g., Feeley et al., 2011). In the mass communication domain, such bibliometric work can help document larger trends in theory and methodology (e.g., Schweitzer, 1988). Moreover, with college enrollment continuing to decline in the United States for the eighth consecutive year (Fain, 2019), some institutions are embracing a national trend of restructuring and/or eliminating liberal arts and professional programs (Dutt-Ballerstadt, 2019; U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2015). Many JMC programs are now grappling with the need to demonstrate their value to their home institutions.

Typically housed in or alongside the larger Communication discipline, JMC programs have long struggled for legitimacy on many college campuses (Gehrke & Keith, 2015; Rogers, 1994). The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (2016) reports that, when Journalism majors and Advertising/Public Relations majors are added to Communication and Journalism, the prevalence of these majors accounts for 5.16 of all college graduates; this represents the third largest major (behind two business fields; see Camera, 2019). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (2015) data indicate that communication was the only discipline in the humanities to experience bachelor’s degree completion growth from 2012 to 2015.

JMC has thus emerged as a popular major that primes students for professional careers in high-demand fields such as technical writing and public relations (Department of Labor, 2019). Despite these enrollment prospects, many academics find themselves needing to justify the value of their program to college administrators through the use of objective and subjective data (e.g., Becker et al., 2013). Multiple prestige metrics have been used over the years to communicate the importance and relevance of the field. These metrics include citation rates, grants, awards, diversity of faculty, diversity of students, and subjective peer evaluations (National Research Council, 2010).

Edwards et al. (1988) found a strong correspondence between “objective” measures of this sort and more “subjective” peer evaluations (e.g., National Research Council, 2010) and other institutional quality indicators (e.g., “quality” faculty placements; see Barnett & Feeley, 2011). While no single method is comprehensive, scholarly productivity rates are a valuable data point that can be used to communicate departmental contribution and prestige. Scholarly productivity research can help illuminate scholarly contributions made by individual faculty (e.g., Griffin et al., 2018) and full departments (Feeley et al., 2011). This information provides a vital data point that is necessary to consider when conducting holistic assessments about departmental value in the field of communication and at home institutions. Greenberg and Schweitzer (1989) summarize the stakes involved with these evaluative enterprises:

This kind of information is widely used for internal and external purposes by institutions which find themselves highly rated. It used to recruit students and faculty, to impress central administration at budget hearings, and to seek external funding . . . (p. 473)

The present study profiles scholarly productivity in Journalism and Communication (J&C) across the discipline’s first century, focusing on scholarly output for institutions in referred journals indexed by the Communication Institute for Online Scholarship (CIOS) database since 1915. In particular, we profile of attributes of publication frequency for (a) academic departments and (b) prolific individual faculty (anonymized) within the field.

Background

The tracking of scholarly productivity in Communication is a relatively new area of inquiry. Cole and Bowers (1973) were among the first to track scholarly productivity in mass communication, documenting the schools which produced the greatest number of research articles from 1962 to 1971. Noting the prevalence of similar productivity assessments in other disciplines, King and Baran (1981) analyzed productivity from 1970 to 1979 in five criterion journals. They found a link between having a journal editor as a colleague and productivity in that outlet; this held true for each of the journals analyzed (i.e., Journal of Broadcasting, Journal of Communication, Journalism Quarterly, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Educational Communication & Technology). Study results also revealed shifting patterns across units listed in their top 10—dominated by the institutions comprising the “Big-10” at that time—three of which were trending up and four of which were trending downward during the decade.

Hickson et al. (2004) note that by the late 1970s, “assessment had achieved a place in communication,” with academic journals emerging as the “the gatekeepers of knowledge of the profession” (p. 324). Subsequent investigations have examined research article productivity in such sub-domains as telecommunication (e.g., Vincent, 1991), advertising (Zou, 2005), across ethnic diasporas in Communication (So, 2001), by gender (Hickson et al., 1992), and across the Communication field generally (e.g., Griffin et al., 2018). To wit, Stephen (2014) concludes that the century-old Communication discipline has produced a corpus of over 65,000 articles, the dissemination of which has increased so dramatically as “to likely leave many communication scholars unaware of evolving currents in scholarly conversation occurring beyond the boundaries of their own specialties” (p. 19).

Schweitzer (1988) calculated individual and institutional scholarly productivity—utilizing a fractional method for dividing credit among two or more article authors—across nine journals devoted to mass communication (e.g., Public Relations Review); he found that “Faculty from 210 schools have articles in mass communication journals between 1980 and 1985, but 57% of articles are from 30 schools” (p. 479). Lagoe et al. (2013) note a preponderance of Midwestern, land-grant universities in various productivity studies, which may be an artifact of the field’s origins in agricultural journalism (e.g., Rogers, 1994). The nature of a program can also figure into unit productivity norms, as Lagoe et al. (2019) found that the average publication frequency for journalism programs was 12.56 (SD = 23.35), roughly half that of communication/communication studies programs (26.57; SD = 41.22).

Greenberg and Schweitzer (1989) note that the “partial credit” approach is one method of quantifying publication rates, which had been based on past work (e.g., Cole & Bowers, 1973). They later reanalyzed Schweitzer’s data, however, noting that,

. . . it is more tedious to calculate and allocate partial credits of .2, .25, .33. 3, etc. than to assign each name one unit of credit each time it appears in an authorship role. Empirically it is more prone to error. (p. 473)

The authors advocate quantifying each authorship entry as a unique contribution to better reflect the value provided by more senior faculty, as mentorship often involves collaborative research with junior faculty and graduate students. Such data are also more consistent with records kept in the Index to Journals in Communication (e.g., Matlon & Ortiz, 1997) and subsequent CIOS database, which explains the ascendancy of that method since 1990 (e.g., Hickson et al., 2004).

The Current Study

Analyzing one of the more comparable time frames to the present study, Hickson et al. (2004) profiled prolific authors in 24 journals, from 1915 to 2001. The study found that 90% of all contributors had five or fewer publications, although aggregate scholarly productivity has been increasing over time; the minimum number of citations to be ranked among the 100 most active scholars (or top 1%) had increased from 15 in 1993 to 23 in 2001. Most had completed their degrees 16 to 50 years earlier and were working in doctoral degree-granting units. Bolkan et al. (2012) provided an update through 2011, based on that same list of journals, where an output of 40 articles was needed to qualify among the top 1% of authors.

Stephen and Geel (2007) utilized the Communication Online Scholarship Database (CIOS) database—which spans over 100 years and 50,000 publications—to establish normative publication practices in referred journals. They found that rates of contribution of single-authored publications had declined and was not offset by increases in multi-authored publications. Feeley et al.’s (2011) analysis of CIOS data found that a program’s doctoral pedigree and program publishing frequency predicted the centrality of job placement for its doctoral graduates. The data suggest that 29% of faculty members in CIOS-affiliated institutions had not contributed any articles to the mainline journals. This proportion is down from the 39% non-publication rate uncovered by Stephen and Geel (2007), in the assessment of publication numbers from 1915 to 2005 in 87 scholarly journals, profiling normative productivity by year of degree completion. Related analyses have utilized such data to assess journal quality (e.g., Stephen, 2011, 2012a) and develop a measure of scholarly productivity (Stephen, 2012b).

This evolving corpus of scholarly productivity research thus raises the following research questions about scholarship in the larger J&C discipline:

RQ1: Which departments are responsible for producing the most scholarly research in J&C and what are their attributes?

RQ2: What constitutes a prolific researcher in J&C journals?

RQ3: What is the distribution of the number of authors per publication?

Method

Data for this study were derived from a database maintained by CIOS, an independent, non-profit organization supported by library subscriptions. In particular, CIOS provides support to education and research in J&C through the following databases: (a) ComVista, which tracks department faculty membership in approximately 700 J&C departments in the United States and Canada, (b) ComAbstracts, which tracks all papers published in 145 central journals in J&C (from 1915 to 2018), and (c) ComAnalytics, which utilizes merged data from ComVista and ComAbstracts to provide normative publication frequency data for individuals and departments in the field.

Measures of interest

The present analysis gauged CIOS-based publication frequency by characteristics of (a) institutional affiliation (including department/school unit, number of unit faculty, and terminal degree granted) and (b) individual (anonymous) prolific scholars (including alma mater, year of graduation, departmental affiliation, publication frequency, and proportion of multi-authored articles). These variables of interest are further defined, in turn.

Institutional/department identifier

This identifier is the most current name of each department and institution in the CIOS database. In addition to institutional affiliation, this category includes names used to signify academic units (e.g., department, school, unit, etc.). Information on the type of degree program each department held (i.e., Masters or Doctoral) was also examined.

Publication frequency

Publication frequency is the total number of publication credits each author had within the 182 journals specified within the CIOS database (see the appendix).

Program faculty

Program faculty refers to the number of faculty employed—numbering over 10,000 total—within each program across the dates of analysis specified. Information about the faculty’s department affiliation (listed on publication) and year of degree conferral was also included. Active scholars included those who had published an article in one of the criterion journals within the previous 5 years.

Authorship

The number of each author’s publications could be categorized as single or multi-author publications.

Analysis

Consistent with past work, the present study employed a range of analyses to explore the data. First, the data were sorted to identify the publication rankings of individual scholars. Second, productivity metrics of individual scholars were combined by department to generate data about departmental productivity. Third, descriptive statistics were used to examine trends in productivity trends such as productivity frequency and multi-authored publications.

Results

Academic department productivity

The present data set encompasses 6,716 articles listed in the CIOS database, from 1915 to 2018. RQ1 queried the attributes of the top-producing academic units, the highlights for which are outlined in Table 1. All analyses were conducted at the program-specific level—rather than the institutional level—given that many schools host multiple doctoral programs (e.g., Michigan State University [MSU] and Texas). Total publications within these departments ranged from 176 (for #30, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Communication Arts) to 437 (for the most prolific program, UC Santa Barbara [UCSB]). UCSB is joined by University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), Penn State, and Texas among the top four institutions, with each program generating 400+ publications. All but four of these programs were housed in public institutions.

Table 1.

Top Ranked Departments in Journalism and Communication.

Rank	Publication, n	Program type	Institution	Department	Faculty, n
1	437	D	University of California, Santa Barbara	Department of Communication	17
2	424	M	University of Alabama at Birmingham	Department of Communication Studies	10
3	406	D	Pennsylvania State University	Department of Communication Arts & Sciences	17
4	404	D	University of Texas at Austin	Department of Communication Studies	20
5	366	D	West Virginia University	Department of Communication Studies	13
6	358	D	The Ohio State University	School of Communication	24
7	332	D	University of Utah	Department of Communication	24
8	329	D	Northwestern University	Department of Communication Studies	33
9	329	D	University of Maryland, College Park	Department of Communication	19
10	323	D	University of Pennsylvania	Annenberg School for Communication	18
11	316	D	University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign	Department of Communication	21
11	316	D	University of Arizona	Department of Communication	12
13	303	D	University of Southern California	School of Communication	33
14	283	M	Texas Christian University	Department of Communication Studies	13
15	246	D	University of Oklahoma, Main Campus	Department of Communication	14
16	244	M	California State University, Long Beach	Department of Communication Studies	28
17	240	D	Michigan State University	Department of Communication	18
18	239	D	George Mason University	Department of Communication	20
19	236	D	University of Oregon	School of Journalism and Communication	33
19	236	D	Washington State University	Edward R. Murrow College of Communication	18
21	232	D	University of Connecticut	Department of Communication	15
22	231	D	Ohio University	School of Communication Studies	21
23	229	D	University of Delaware	Department of Communication	16
24	226	D	Texas A&M University	Department of Communication	19
25	214	D	Arizona State University	Hugh Downs School of Human Communication	17
26	206	D	University of Wisconsin–Madison	School of Journalism and Mass Communication	14
27	202	D	University of North Carolina	School of Media and Journalism	22
27	202	D	Rutgers University	School of Communication and Information	17
29	196	D	University of Washington	Department of Communication	18
29	189	D	University of Georgia	Department of Communication Studies	14

Focusing on program attributes, all but three of the ranked units were involved in doctoral degree-granting programs. The three terminal master’s degree programs making the list include UAB, Texas Christian University, and California State University at Long Beach. All but one of the programs use the word “communication” in their name. Few departments on the list were reflective of the more applied sub-domains of the discipline (e.g., public relations and journalism). The one exception involved North Carolina’s School of Media and Journalism. That program utilized a communication moniker, until recently, however, having replaced the term “mass communication” with “media” in its title.

A third of these top-30 programs were labeled as Schools or Colleges of Communication, although many of the remaining departments were also part of larger colleges of Communication (e.g., Georgia, MSU, Oklahoma, Rutgers, and Texas); roughly half of the units on our list, then, are affiliated with larger Communication-based administrative units. These productive units all house a greater number of faculty (M = 19.4) than the 2015 national average of 5.26 (SD = 4.34; see Lagoe et al., 2019), as only seven of the ranked programs had 15 or fewer faculty.

Productivity of individual scholars

In response to RQ2’s query about what constitutes a prolific scholar, Table 2 highlights key attributes associated with the 30 most published scholars within this data set. A total of 50 publications in criterion journals are required to be included in this list, representing the top 0.4% of scholars listed in the CIOS database. The total number of publications for individual scholars thus ranges from 50 to 122. These individuals all have at least a decade of experience, encompassing a 36-year graduation range (1971–2007; Mdn = 1991).

Table 2.

Top Ranked Researchers in Journalism and Communication (With Scholars’ Names Anonymized).

Rank	Publication, n	Program type	PhD year	Institution	Department
1	122	M	1979	University of Alabama at Birmingham	Department of Communication Studies
2	108	M	1992	University of Alabama at Birmingham	Department of Communication Studies
3	101	D	1974	University of Arizona	Department of Communication
4	91	D	1976	University of Miami	School of Communication
4	91	D	1995	West Virginia University	Department of Communication Studies
6	80	M	1977	University of Alabama at Birmingham	Department of Communication Studies
6	80	D	1992	West Virginia University	Department of Communication Studies
8	78	D	1971	University of California, Santa Barbara	Department of Communication
9	74	D	1983	Pennsylvania State University	Department of Communication Arts & Sciences
10	73	M	2003	Texas Christian University	Department of Communication Studies
11	73	D	2007	West Virginia University	Department of Communication Studies
12	68	D	1978	Michigan State University	Department of Communication
13	66	D	1975	Northwestern University	Department of Communication Studies
14	62	D	1989	University Missouri Columbia	Strategic Communication Program
15	62	D	2001	University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill	School of Media and Journalism
15	62	D	1974	University of Pennsylvania	Annenberg School for Communication
15	62	D	1988	The Ohio State University	School of Communication
18	61	D	1994	University of Arizona	Department of Communication
19	59	D	1990	University of Arizona	Department of Communication
20	55	D	1998	University of Arizona	Department of Communication
21	54	D	1991	University Oklahoma, Main Campus	Department of Communication
22	53	D	1999	University of Alabama	Department of Telecommunication & Film
23	53	D	1999	University of Wisconsin–Madison	Department of Life Sciences Communication
25	51	D	1975	University of Maryland	Department of Communication
25	51	D	1999	University of Wisconsin–Madison	School of Journalism and Mass Communication
27	50	D	1988	University of Connecticut	Department of Communication
27	50	D	1989	University of South Florida	School of Advertising & Mass Communication
29	49	D	1983	University of Kansas	Department of Communication Studies
29	49	D	1999	The Ohio State University	School of Communication
29	49	D	1981	Pennsylvania State University	Department of Communication Arts & Sciences

As with the departmental distribution above, over 90% of scholars on the list work in communication programs (e.g., schools and departments), all but four of which house doctoral programs. Institutions currently housing multiple scholars on the list include Arizona (four), UAB (three), West Virginia (three), Ohio State (two), Penn State (two), Wisconsin (two), and MSU (two). The presence of a single scholar can be pivotal in helping a school qualify among the most prolific units in the field, as one Wisconsin faculty accounted for nearly a quarter (51) of the 206 articles qualifying their school for our final spot in the rankings; the two Wisconsin scholars listed here hailed from different programs, however. Similarly, the top two scholars accounted for most (54%) of UAB’s total. All scholars on the list published the bulk of their work as multi-author publications. In particular, the vast majority published over 80% of their work with other authors (M = 85.5%), including a pair who had no single-authored work; only one published with a coauthor less than 70% of the time.

Productivity metrics

Frequency of publication per scholar across the larger distribution ranged from 0 to 122 articles in total (see Table 3). The majority of scholars listed in the database fell into the lower end of this range. Specifically, 35.5% or 2,337 scholars published 0 articles in the database. Another 61.5% of scholars published between 1 and 24 articles. Fewer than 2.8% of scholars in the database published more than 24 articles in the specified journals.

Table 3.

Number of Faculty by Publication Output Category (N = 6,562).

0	1–24	25–49	50–74	75–99	100–125
2,337 (35.5%)	4,040 (61.5%)	154 (2.3%)	21(0.3%)	8 (0.1%)	2 (0%)

Discussion

The present study set out to profile publication frequency during the J&C discipline’s first century—for academic departments as well as individual faculty—based on data culled from the CIOS database. These attributes were examined in terms of a unit’s degree-granting status, unit and individual publishing frequency, and number of program faculty. Results provide information regarding program quality that could enable certain programs to attract faculty, students, and resources. Where past studies have profiled productivity based on as few as five journals over 10 years, current findings are based on an exhaustive picture of approximately 180 CIOS-index journals encompassing over 6,700 articles penned since 1915.

As Feeley et al. (2011) note, the predominance of speech communication programs and scholars on past productivity lists (e.g., Burroughs et al. (1989); Griffin et al., 2018; Hickson et al., 2004) reflects content dimensions inherent to the original 24 journals included in the original Communication Index. By expanding that list over seven-fold to include a wider array of JMC outlets, the present study significantly extends past work, providing a more representative picture of the diversity of our field. Inspection of prolific programs and faculty reveals that units devoted to mass communication scholars—distributed across units in Journalism, Media, and the like—are well-established in the larger CIOS sample. This comprehensive scope can thus provide the kind of definitive, externally valid portrait of productivity absent in past work, often more focused on such areas as Speech (e.g., Hickson et al., 2004). In particular, study findings provide useful diagnostic information on where a given unit (or individual scholar) stands in relation to the larger field, as it enters the second century.

Roughly 40 years earlier, Baran and King (1981) found that six of the 10 most productive schools in their list were affiliated with the “Big 10.” The current findings also generally affirm the primacy of large public institutions, many of which are located in the Midwest (i.e., most of the institutions in the expanded, 14-member “Big-10” conference) (e.g., Hickson et al., 2004). This likely represents a legacy of the field’s Midwestern roots, where some of the earliest Schools or Colleges of (Mass) Communication evolved from agricultural journalism programs (see, for example, Rogers, 1994). Similarly, Schweitzer (1988) characterized those institutions scoring in his top-30 list—which includes 40% of the schools listed here—as “large, state-supported schools with a strong tradition of research” (p. 479).

The finding that 36% of the scholars in the CIOS database had published no articles confirms past work, roughly falling at the midpoint between Feeley et al. (2011) 29% and Neuendorf et al. (2007) (39%). This suggests that J&C units could redouble their outreach efforts to encourage further scholarship, as the plurality of scholars in J&C have published no articles, while the majority have published one or fewer articles. As commentators (e.g., Arenson, 2012) suggest, this uneven portrait of research activity mirrors a larger tension in the discipline between theory and practice. To wit, this relatively low disciplinary publication activity reflects that skills-oriented (e.g., journalism, TV production) programs typically stress “practice” over academic research. These findings reinforce results from annual surveys reported in JMCE suggesting that, between 1999 and 2013, faculty members became more diverse and have more professional service outside of the academy (Becker et al., 2012).

This hybridized disciplinary equilibrium between theory and research may, in turn, have limited the discipline’s programmatic impact across the academy, and society at large. Related work suggests that J&C scholars have long been more active as “importers” citations from other disciplines while garnering fewer citations to “our” own work. According to the National Communication Association’s (2015) cross-disciplinary analysis of research, the larger discipline ranks “among the smaller subject categories both in terms of overall number of citations and articles published” (p. 8). In order to bridge these gaps, J&C units would do well to consider expanding their research footprint. Clearly, the discipline must change and evolve—mirroring the trends that are reshaping our larger information/communication economy—in order to survive and advance. Ideally, the productive units profiled here can help provide a useful picture of successful programmatic exemplars.

Entering its second century, Journalism and the larger Communication discipline thus stands at a crossroads. Gabbatt (2020) recounts data detailing the loss of most newspaper jobs since 2008, with more at risk from the “extinction event” that the COVID-19 pandemic poses to the industry (para 1). This transition includes changes wrought by convergence—in technology/platforms, ownership/regulation, content/function, and theory/research—that has broken down old barriers between mass and interpersonal communication, entertainment and journalism, and so on. A preliminary study of authorship affiliation over the past decade (Lagoe et al., 2019) found that this convergence extends to program names as well, as witnessed by the decline of non-communication monikers.

Inspection of highly rated programs and scholars here bears this trend out, as virtually all contributors were affiliated with programs containing the word “communication” in their title. Further such flexible standardization will be crucial as digital voice, video, and data platforms—distributed through scalable interactive wired and wireless channels—continue to transform the ways in which we consume entertainment, journalism, politics, advertising, PR and health campaigns, and so on. For instance, as emerging digital vehicles like Facebook and Google now dominate advertising revenue and election processes—often operating free from the ethical and regulatory constraints of their legacy media counterparts—J&C scholarship will be needed to chronicle emerging trends and social impacts.

The fact that most of the “ranked” programs had 19 or more faculty seems a logical function of scale. This is also consistent with past work (e.g., Feeley et al., 2011), including a positive and strong correlation (r = .76, p < .01) between number of faculty and publication frequency in 2015 (Authors, 2019). Moreover, the finding that virtually all top-producing departments (N = 27) are designated as communication-oriented—as opposed practical areas (e.g., journalism or P.R.)—also confirms past work (e.g., Lagoe et al., 2019; Hickson et al., 2004). Again, this dynamic likely reflects the greater premium that many applied units place on practice (as opposed to research).

The continued emergence of digital media will likely spur further cross-disciplinary trends in research, resulting in new administrative structures—which may nevertheless house Journalism units. Rutgers and Kent State, for instance, include journalism programs under Colleges of Communication and Information. This is particularly important as converging media alter the ways in which news and entertainment content is produced, shared and consumed. Such an approach could help enable J&C to serve the professional and scholarly audiences to whom the discipline must appeal.

In a parallel investigation of CIOS data between 2009 and 2015, Lagoe et al. (2019) found movement (a) away from use of specific terms—such as speech or public communication, in favor of more general monikers like media and/or media studies and (b) toward more hybridized names for applied areas of the field (e.g., pairing journalism with public relations; while this suggests that units may not want to constrain their study of a broad, evolving field by using specialized names, that study did caution that other considerations apply: “research productivity is not necessarily the primary goal for many communication programs, especially for those that only offer undergraduate degrees” (p. 14). Later work could profitably explore possible linkages between program naming, regional location, enrollments, and measures of faculty productivity and/or quality.

Limitations

The current study is limited in several respects. As a secondary analysis of CIOS-based data, the authors did not have extensive control over the data points included, nor its accuracy. Some authors may have generated a considerably larger research corpus than could detected even in this sample, which reflect the largest canvassing of J&C research to date. In cases where primary information was incomplete, attempts were made to verify entries at departmental websites which may, themselves, not have been fully updated. Although the present findings represent a static, cumulative measure of productivity—in the absence of year-over-year trend points—they approximate a comprehensive, census-level snapshot of the larger discipline’s first century. Later work could consider Barnett and Feeley’s (2011) admonition that no single indicator is completely reflective of program quality.

Still, productivity studies can enhance a larger portfolio including such output as creative or other research activity (grants, books) and subjective evaluations of program quality (e.g., the National Research Council’s [2010] decennial survey of reputational standing in Communication). Although the National Research Council’s evaluative enterprises have not been without controversy themselves (e.g., Feeley et al., 2011), the fact that Communication was finally recognized alongside other disciplines—for the first time in 2010—provides testament to how far the discipline has advanced in its first century. Ideally, J&C units can utilize such assessments to solidify the discipline’s standing in the academy.

Footnotes

Appendix

Journals Included in CIOS Database—Part I.

Argumentation & Advocacy	Communication Law and Policy	Feminist Media Studies
Journal of the American Forensic Association	Communication Monographs	The International Communication Gazette
Journal of the Association for Communication Administration	Speech Monographs	Gazette
Advances in Discourse Processes	Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication	Global Media and Communication
Advances in the History of Rhetoric	Communication & Medicine	Health Communication
Australian Journal of Communication	Communication Methods and Measures	Human Communication Research
Asian Journal of Information and Communication	Convergence	Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
Communication & Convergence Review	Communication	Howard Journal of Communication
Australian Studies in Journalism	Communication Quarterly	International Journal of Press/Politics
American Journalism	Today’s Speech	Harvard International Journal of Press Politics
Annals of the International Communication Association	Communication Research	Issues in Applied Linguistics
Communication Yearbook	Communication Reports	International Journal of Business Communication
Asian Journal of Communication	Communication Research Reports	Journal of Business Communication
Advances in Telematics	Communication Review	Information Communication & Society
Atlantic Journal of Communication	Critical Studies in Media Communication	International Journal of Communication
British Journalism Review	Critical Studies in Mass Communication	International Journal on Media Management
Business and Professional Communication Quarterly	Communication Studies	International Journal of Strategic Communication
Business Communication Quarterly	Central States Speech Journal	International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics
Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies	Communication Theory	Journal of Applied Communication Research
Communication & Sport	Journal of Intercultural Communication	Journal of Radio & Audio Media
Communicatie	Discourse & Communication	Javnost—The Public
Communication, Culture & Critique	Discourse Processes	Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media
Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies	Discourse and Society	Journal of Broadcasting
Critical Discourse Studies	Communications	Iowa Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Communication Education	Electronic Journal of Communication	Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Speech Teacher	Empedocles	Journal of Children and Media
Central European Journal of Communication	Environmental Communication	Journal of Communication Inquiry
Chinese Journal of Communication	Electronic News	Journalism and Communication Monographs
Communication	European Journal of Communication	Journalism and Mass Communication Monographs
Canadian Journal of Communication	First Amendment Studies	Journalism Monographs
Canadian Journal of Rhetorical Studies	Free Speech Yearbook	Journal of Communication and Religion
Religious Communication Today	Language and Communication	Qualitative Research Reports in Communication
Journal of Family Communication	International Journal of Listening	Rhetorica
Journal of Communication in Healthcare	Mass Communication Research	Russian Journal of Communication
Jour of Health Communication	Mass Communication and Society	Research on Language and Social Interaction
Journalism History	Management Communication Quarterly	The Review of Communication
Journal of Intercultural Communication Research	Mass Communication Review	Rhetoric and Public Affairs
Journal of International and Intercultural Communication	Media, Culture & Society	Rhetoric Review
Journal of International Communication	Media Psychology	Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Journal of Language and Social Psychology	Media History	Science Communication
Journal of Media Business Studies	Mobile Media & Communication	Southern Communication Journal
Journal of Mediated Communication	Media Research Issues	Southern Speech Communication Journal
News Computing Journal	Media Studies Journal	Southern Speech Journal
Journal of Media Economics	Gannett Center Journal	Studies in Communication Sciences
Journal of Marketing Communication	New Media & Society	Semiotica
Journal of Media Ethics	Nordicom Review	Small Group Research
Journal of Mass Media Ethics	Newspaper Research Journal	Social Media + Society
Journal of Media and Religion	Organization Communication	Social Neuroscience
Journal of Communication	Operant Subjectivity	Studies in Communication
Journalism & Mass Communication Educator	Progress in Communication Sciences	Television and New Media
Journalism Practice	Philosophy and Rhetoric	Visual Communication
Journal of Popular Film and Television	Political Communication	Visual Communication Quarterly
Journal of Public Relations Research	Political Communication and Persuasion	Voices of Democracy
Public Relations Research Annual	Popular Communication	Women and Language
Journalism and Mass Communication	Public Opinion Quarterly	Written Communication
Journalism Quarterly	Public Relations Research & Education	Western Journal of Communication
Journalism	Public Relations Inquiry	Western Journal of Speech Communication
Journal of Radio Studies	Personal Relationships	Western Speech Communication
Journal of Sports Media	Public Relations Review	Western Speech
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships	Quarterly Jour of Speech	Women’s Studies in Communication
Journalism Studies		Westminster Papers in Communication & Culture

Note. CIOS = Communication Institute for Online Scholarship.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

David J. Atkin is a professor of Communication at the University of Connectiut. He completed his PhD at Michigan State University. His research interests include the diffusion of digital media and program formats, political communication and digital media policy.

Carolyn Lagoe is an associate professor of English and Communication at Nazareth College. She completed her PhD at the University of Connecticut. Her research interests include the use of health communication campaigns and the impace of online information seeking on health knowledge, atttudes and behaviors.

Timothy D. Stephen is a professor of Communication at the University at Albany, SUNY and President of the Communication Institute for Online Scholarship. He completed his PhD at Bowling Green State University. His recent scholarship examines the inter-relationship between modern culture, communication practices, intimacy, and mental health.

Archana Krishnan is an assistant professor of Communication at the University at Albany, SUNY. She completed her PhD from the University of Connecticut and a postdoctoral fellowship from Yale University. Her work has been published in multiple journals including Information, Communication & Society, Journal of Applied Communication Research, and Health Communication.

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