Those of you that only write and appreciate peer-reviewed articles may leave the room; this screed is addressed to those colleagues who write, publish and appreciate books in the field of communication scholarship.

As we all know, our wide ranging, multi-disciplinary field includes those who primarily communicate the results of their scholarship via peer reviewed journals, as well as scholars who produce monographs published by university presses and academically-oriented trace presses [e.g., Peter Lang, Polity, Routledge, SAGE, etc.]. Some of our colleagues, and I count myself in this group, have published both journal articles and books.

In the realm of journal articles we are all now familiar, if not necessarily happy with the dominant system of ranking and assessment – ISI indexing, impact ratings, etc. – that are expected and carefully scrutinized by personnel committees, departmental and university administrators and even governmental agencies.  This is not the occasion for elaborating my many objections to this measurement regime – I’ve noted some concerns in columns for the ICA Newsletter – but I want to note that these assessment systems are in place and scholars whose research appears in journals can presume that their work will be evaluated in these terms.

In the case of scholars whose work appears in book form there are no such familiar ranking, citation and impact scores available for those who wish to assess the importance of our work. Again, I am noting facts of life, not endorsing current systems of assessment. Granted, there are a number of recognition mechanisms available for noting achievements in the domain of books. Awards are given by professional associations – both ICA and NCA give out book awards each year, as do many of their divisions, and as do other scholarly associations. But, of course, there are many many more books published each year than any award committee will be able to consider. And, it seems safe to say, there will be many many more highly deserving books published each year than any current award system will be able to recognize.  A great many authors of excellent books will find their work un-recognized by our limited award mechanisms – you know who you are.

Of course, you are thinking, the way books are noted, assessed, recognized, etc., is through book reviews published in our scholarly journals. This is certainly the view of university personnel committees, deans and provosts, who routinely expect that appointment, tenure and promotion files will contain laudatory reviews of the books written by scholars whose work appears in this form.

But, in the case of communication scholars, these expectations are not necessarily realistic.  As an administrator who has to prepare and submit dossiers to university personnel committees, it is certainly awkward to admit that, while our field values and believes in the importance of scholarly books, we do not manifest these values and beliefs by actually, you know, reviewing them.

In case this seems over-stated, here is some data. I examined the volumes of our flagship journal, the Journal of Communication for the years 1982, 1992, and 2002. There is no point in examining the current, 2012, issues, because they contain no book reviews at all, but I’ll get back to that. Nor are there any book reviews in the other ICA journals, and there never have been any, really, in HCR, CT, JCMC or CCC.

In 1982, the four issues of JoC contained 32, 30, 32, and 24 reviews, respectively. In issue #3, there were 16 regular reviews, and 16 “brief reviews” [the latter all written by Review Editor Sandra Braman].

In 1992, the first issue included 21 reviews; the second issue included two review essays covering 16 books, seven regular reviews, and ten “in brief” reviews. The third issue included two review essays – 12 books – as well as five reviews and 10 “in brief” reviews.  The fourth issue included two review essays – eight books – seven reviews, and 10 “in brief” notices.

In 2002, only one of the four issues contained any reviews: the second issue included 15 reviews.

The current issues of the Journal of Communication, as I noted, contain no reviews at all. However, the masthead does list a book review editor, and the “Top Aims and Scope” statement says: “The Journal of Communication also features an extensive book review section…” Unfortunately, there is no indication that I can find that would tell a reader how to locate that extensive section. One is told who the book review editor is and how to contact her, but one is not told where to find the reviews that might result. 

I do recall being told – I am the past president of the association, so I’m in the loop – that the reviews were being “moved online” in the past year or so, to make room for articles. But when I go to the Journal website I can not find any mention of book reviews, let alone an extensive book review section. Zip, zilch, nada.

Now, I expect that this oversight will be swiftly corrected, and I am not intending here to focus my criticism on the editors of the journal or Wiley-Blackwell, although I am, obviously, disappointed to note these facts. My criticism is aimed at the field as a whole, or at least those of us who believe in the importance of books as a vehicle for our scholarship.

Checking the NCA journals the landscape is a little more encouraging. The Quarterly Journal of Speech includes a review essay [six books] and five reviews in the latest issue; the previous issues this year include one review, and a review essay [three books] and three reviews.  Text & Performance Quarterly ran five reviews in 2011 and seven so far in 2012. There is also the Taylor & Francis online journal, Communication Booknotes Quarterly, that Chris Sterling has been editing for years, that runs numerous short notes on books in mass communication, telecommunication and the information industry.

I am also writing as the editor of the International Journal of Communication,  an online-only journal that Manuel Castells and I launched six years ago. Among our goals in starting the journal was to demonstrate the viability of an online-only journal to achieve the highest standards of peer review publication, and I believe that this goal has been achieved. We were accepted for ISI indexing in our fifth year, which seems to be something of a record; we are receiving as many submissions as the Journal of Communication; and we have the sort of low acceptance [meaning high rejection] rate that elite journals, like elite universities like to boast.

The goal we have not been able to achieve to my satisfaction, however, is to be able to publish a very large number of book reviews. We do publish more than a few – last year’s volume included 34 reviews, some of which were review essays.  But we’ve not matched the record of the Journal of Communication from 1992. If anyone is interested in reviewing books for IJoC, please contact me…

And, it’s more than the numbers, it is also the reviewers.  When I look back over the reviews in the Journal of Communication in 1992 I see many old friends – some senior scholars at the time, some not-so senior scholars then, who now are.  To be blunt, it was the case then that communication scholars at all career stages saw book reviewing as one of the things they did as members of the community. Today, truth be told, most of the reviews in my journal – and this is not unusual – are written by doctoral students and some junior scholars, despite their concern that this “won’t count” where it matters. And, of course, the Citation and Impact formulas do not include book reviews. But senior scholars, whose careers are established, who are no longer being reviewed for tenure or promotion, can not claim that they are reluctant to review books because they “don’t count.”

Some more data. The field of sociology includes the journal Contemporary Sociology that is largely a book review journal. The current issue contains eight review essays, 35 individual reviews and 20 brief reviews. And this journal appears six times a year.

What I see here is a failure of communal responsibility. For many of us, books are the primary forum in which we write, in which we encourage our students to write, and which we turn to for illumination and intellectual enrichment. But we do not – as a community, obviously there are notable individual exceptions – take on the obligation to support, recognize and maintain the viability of this arena of scholarship. As it stands now, while each of us hopes for reviews of our own books – enthusiastic raves, of course, but really, any serious attention to and engagement with the work we have spent years researching and writing – very few of us are willing to invest our own time in doing onto others what we wish they will do onto us. This is shameful.