Does a global reputation mean a global orientation?
Many universities rely on journal impact factors as convenient proxy measures of faculty members’ research quality. Researchers are pushed to publish in journals that are highly ranked.
Scholars of non-western societies have long noted, though, that top-tier journals, while international in reputation, are far from global in orientation.
We looked at the contents of 20 SSCI-indexed communication journals with high five-year journal impact factors. Our snapshot confirms that top-tier journals still have a geographic diversity problem. Most of the articles are about the west, with a high proportion of articles focusing purely on the United States. Also striking is the lack of North-South comparative work, despite years of advocacy for comparative research.
Read on and view our findings and preliminary analysis here: https://globalmediastudies.network/blog/journals-how-global/
My colleagues and I at the Global Media Sudies Network hope you will contribute ideas on how to make the field’s journals and book publishers less western-centric and more globally diverse. We invite you to use our questionnaire to tell us what you think individual researchers, departments, associations, and editors/publishers can do. And if you would like to join our network, now more than 700 strong, please sign up here.
Thank you.
Cherian George
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The Global Media Sudies Network isan informal collective of academics from different continents, led by Saba Bebawi, Cherian George, Silvio Waisbord, and Herman Wasserman. If you are attending the International Communication Association Annual Conference in Toronto in May, please do add our panel to your itinerary: “Globalising research and teaching of media and communication studies” takes places on Monday 29 May, 1:30–2:45pm.
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