Abstract
The first issue of Volume 14 of New Media & Society (NM&S) provides opportunity to reflect on what we published in 2011 and what is expected for the year underway. Although we do not take opportunity for such reflection every year, we did compose an editorial exactly one year ago and are using the framework of that text as basis for these comments.
Perhaps a convenient place to start is with a few statistics and an updating of the tabular overview presented in the 13(1) editorial. As in 2010, the sheer volume of published material is, by our standards, staggering: 1400 pages distributed across 8 issues, with 73 Research Articles, 7 Review Articles and 19 Book Reviews presented in those pages. As in previous years, the breadth of this scholarship defies simple categorization. A cursory glance through the contents of issues reflects that breadth, with articles addressing the many forms of social and personal media (e.g., Twitter, YouTube, blogs), with studies about online news and journalism, with special attention to youth and social media, with examination of core concepts associated with new media (e.g., interactivity, public sphere, digital divide, convergence), and with attention to emergence of new media forms in Asia and particularly China.
NM&S published one theme issue in 2011, guest edited by Rich Ling and Heather Horst, entitled ‘Mobile Communication in the Global South’. This issue, introduced with a substantive article by its editors (Ling and Horst, 2011), can rightly be considered a high point in the year for NM&S, and includes 8 focused studies on the uptake of mobile phones among people in nation states commonly characterized as ‘Third World’. The issue complements one prepared by Nancy Baron for NM&S in 2010 that addressed mobile communication in mainly developed regions of the world (Baron, 2010).
Back to statistics, below is an updated version of the table that appeared in the Volume 13 NM&S editorial. This version includes a column of figures for 2011 and a few updates for prior years. Once again, the number of submissions has increased, and is now about 450 manuscripts annually. The rate of acceptance has remained relatively constant, averaging about 19% per year. Note: the acceptance figure for 2011 of 9% is incomplete because many manuscripts submitted in that year are still under consideration. The number of internal decisions regarding submissions, reflected in the row ‘Peer Reviewed’, declined somewhat since 2010, but continues to show development of a more stringent policy regarding internal review prior to soliciting external reviews for double blind assessment of submissions.
Longitudinal overview of NM&S submission site statistics
The number of requests to revise and resubmit manuscripts, shown in the row ‘Resubmit’, has remained high since a dramatic jump in 2010; again, this reflects a more rigorous editorial policy regarding acceptance of submissions. The amount of time between submission and completion of the review process, shown in the row ‘Days to Review’, indicates an average of about three months between date of submission and final decision regarding publication, which often involves two and sometimes three rounds of external review. While we would like to see this time period shortened, the period is within our bounds of acceptability, particularly given NM&S policy to solicit substantive reviews to be shared with the authors of submissions. Finally, the row ‘Registered Users’ in the table reflects the number of persons who have registered on the journal Web site and who are, by and large, members of the pool of scholars from which we solicit reviews of submissions. The figure for 2011 indicates almost 4600 persons in this group.
We realize the limitations of such an overview in reflecting the richness of the scholarship published by NM&S. As suggested in earlier editorials, we hope this overview can be expanded with a formal, longitudinal study of the emergence and trends of new media scholarship, in NM&S as well as in other journals concerned with this scholarly domain. Although no more than impressionistic, our sense as editors is that NM&S continues to reflect a pluralistic approach regarding theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, and disciplinary background of authors. Above all, the articles published in NM&S in 2011 (and in previous years, for that matter) reflect an overriding objective: to publish the best scholarship available that contributes to understanding the societal importance of new media developments.
In 2011 seven review articles were published and almost a score of individual book reviews. The review articles were generally comparative essays that addressed three recently published books. For 2012 NM&S Reviews Editor David Park has begun soliciting more extensive manuscripts that provide a panoramic examination of developments, much like those appearing in some annual publications and in PhD dissertations. Several such extended reviews of the literature are in preparation and we expect to publish one or two in 2012.
One of the common measures that scholars use – and misuse – to judge and rank journals is the Citation Rankings developed by the Thomson Reuters Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). The most recent Impact Factor (IF) for NM&S (2011) is 1.091, and in that year the journal ranked 18th out of the 67 periodicals included in the category Communication. The Impact Factor of a journal varies from year to year and for that and other reasons the ranking should be used with care. Still, the reported rankings across time suggest both an increase and, possibly, leveling off: 2003: 0.689, 2008: 0.821, 2010: 1.326, and 2011: 1.091. A safe conclusion from these figures is that the position of NM&S within the broad field of journals in communication studies has become firm and reflects high use by scholars.
Two other indicators of use are frequency of downloads from SAGE Journals Online (SJO) and citations recorded in the SAGE database. The section of the SJO Web site for NM&S provides information on the indicators, ‘Most Read’ and ‘Most Cited’; see http://nms.sagepub.com/. For both indicators, the top 50 articles are mentioned, showing rank order for frequency of downloads (termed ‘Most Read’ on the SAGE Web site) and for ‘Most Cited’. Although only reporting rank order limits the utility of these lists, the information does suggest the popularity of NM&S articles across time. For January 2012, the most frequently read article (based on full-text views) dates from almost four years ago: an article by NM&S board member Sonia Livingstone (2008) on teenagers and social networking sites. The most cited article is authored by another NM&S board member, Zizi Papacharissi (2002), about the Internet and the public sphere, and was published a decade ago. Among other things, these rankings suggest a long shelf life for NM&S articles. More recently published articles are also noted in the rankings and include a study by Alice Marwick and danah boyd (2011) on Twitter and one on Facebook by Nicole Ellison et al. (2011).
Shelf life reflects the durability and quality of the scholarship published in NM&S, and that is related to the emphasis we place on substantive reviewing of submissions. Like many journals, NM&S exercises a double-blind peer review procedure, but we also expect – and generally receive – extended and substantive comments from these scholars. This exchange between persons unknown to each other, sometimes across several rounds of manuscript revision, demonstrates a collective commitment to quality scholarship. We as editors of NM&S are impressed by the level of interaction in this process, and appreciate the contribution of those involved, authors and reviewers, to this time-consuming procedure. A special word of thanks to reviewers of submissions to NM&S during 2011 prefaces the list of reviewers published in the last pages of this issue.
Several journal-related events are scheduled for 2012. We will, as usual, be publishing individual articles, review articles and book reviews – the staple of any issue of NM&S. We will also be publishing two, possibly three, theme issues in 2012: on political communication and the Internet, on Internet studies, and on scholarly communication. These issues are in preparation and will go into production around mid-2012. One of these issues involves an experiment with open peer review, which is based on initiatives taken by other authors and journals; see reflection on one such initiative involving Shakespeare Quarterly (Rowe and Fitzpatrick, 2010). Although it is too early to tell what may develop with the NM&S experiment in open peer review, we believe such reviewing may complement but will not replace the quality and thoroughness NM&S receives in its blind reviewing procedures. The NM&S experiment in open peer review may be examined at: http://nms-theme.ehumanities.nl/.
It is fitting to mention in such an annual editorial changes in personnel that transpired during the previous year. Editorial Assistant Maggie Griffith resigned from the Chicago office in order to work full-time on her PhD dissertation. Maggie assured submissions were processed efficiently during her many years of service, and we are very grateful. Jenny Ungbha Korn has assumed the role of Editorial Assistant and we welcome her ‘on board’. SAGE staff member Amit Panda took responsibility for the production of both the online and print versions of NM&S in 2011 and we are appreciative of the detailed attention given to these phases of the publishing process.
As 2012 begins, we welcome initiation of a series of journal-related events mentioned above – the experiment with open peer review, the publication of several theme issues, and especially the inclusion of contributions in the new section of the journal called Review Articles. We welcome the new editorial board members whose names will appear in the second issue in 2012; equally important we wish to acknowledge our appreciation for the contributions of those board members whose term of office has expired. Most of all, we welcome a year of publishing quality scholarship about a domain of concern that has come of age: new media and society.