(Wiley-Blackwell is now accepting orders for this title. To purchase a copy, visit Blackwell's website.)

The idea behind this project is to create the premiere and absolutely essential reference source in the field of Communication. Communication is a relatively young discipline and this unique and definitive reference work would serve the discipline by making a body of knowledge and expertise available to a wide audience, encompassing those in the field and those whose interests touch it. A multivolume reference work of this kind would represent the field in it entirety in one place and would serve as a statement by the community of what it has achieved. ICA, as the leading research arm of the discipline, is ideally situated to make this definitive statement in the interests of the field and their members.

The ICA/Blackwell encyclopedia will be an A-Z, multi-volume work, with articles ranging from shorter entries to full-length review essays (for a similar model see Palgrave's Dictionary of Economics, 4-volume set). In keeping with ICA's mission to serve an international audience, the volumes will be international in scope. The work will be available electronically, as well as in printed formats. Blackwell makes a substantial web service investment in projects of this kind, including a portal or subject site. The ICA/Blackwell Encyclopedia of Communication would be bought and consulted in every academic library that had a connection with communication studies; in its electronic form we would aim to make it available on the desktop of every researcher and student in the field.

A collaboration between ICA and Blackwell on such a project makes good sense, as ICA has the international outreach in content and Blackwell publishes globally for the English-speaking world. Another major contributing factor to the caliber of this project is the strength and quality of Blackwell's brand; they are well known as a premiere reference publisher in all of the fields in which they publish. For instance, they are currently developing a definitive, 10-volume Encyclopedia of Sociology with leading Sociologist, George Ritzer. They have also published the 12-volume Encyclopedia of Management (http://www.managementencyclopedia.com/overview.asp).

The General Editor of the ICA/Blackwell Encyclopedia of Communication is Dr. Professor Wolfgang Donsbach, Technische Universität Dresden, a past-president of ICA.