ICA Journal Citations

 

ICA continues to improve on many fronts, due to involved members, a professional and innovative staff managed by Michael Haley, an active Board of Directors, and an experienced Executive Committee. I'd like to highlight just one of those areas this month: the ICA journals. 

 

With the 2006 contractual relationship with Blackwell Publishing, all three of the ICA print journals have considerably increased institutional subscriptions, and impact ratings greater than 1.0 (something like the number of citations to a journal in a 2-year period, divided by the total number of articles published by those journals in the prior 2 years):

 

Communication Theory, now at volume 17, impact rating of 1.51

Journal of Communication, now at volume 57, impact rating of 1.13

Human Communication Research, now at volume 33, impact rating of 1.08

 

And three years ago the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication - originally begun by Peggy McLaughlin and Sheizaf Rafaeli and hosted by the Annenberg School of Communication at USC - became an ICA journal, now at volume 12. Although JCMC is now listed on the Web of Science, it is not yet included in annual Journal Citation Reports (JCR).

 

Beginning in 2008, ICA will add an additional print journal, Communication, Culture and Critique. 

 

As part of its emphasis on increased internationalization, beginning with the January 2007 issues, ICA will provide translations of each journal’s article abstracts in the six UN languages. (Translations are available through the ICA website.) This is fairly costly but was widely supported by the Internationalization Committee and the Board of Directors.

 

The underlying citations of and from journals, as reported in JCR, are the basis for computing the impact factor. They are also the basis for identifying clusters of shared interests, journals, and authors – one widely used form of bibliometrics, or citation analysis.

 

It might be interesting to see just how the three ICA print journals are located in their local citation environments.  Leydesdorff developed a reasonable way to extract what he calls “journal-citation environments” from the otherwise unwieldy matrix of possible citation relations (1710x1710 for social-science journals, and 5907x5907 for science journals). These matrices are also largely empty, as most journals generally cite each other in dense clusters even within their own discipline, and not very frequently across disciplines, although there is a low-level "fuzzy" amount of citations across a wide diversity of other journals. So, rather than try to analyze the entire matrix and identify the clusters and relations within that large but very clumpy set, Leydesdorff instead developed a procedure whereby one can choose any particular journal of interest; the program computes the distribution of citations to and from, and selects only those journals that involve at least one percent of the total citations (from or to). Frequently, it turns out that 10 to 20 or so journals represent most of all citations, so all remaining journals are ignored.

 

Leydesdorff also uses the cosine between the two vectors as the measure of similarity between each pair of resulting journals. He prefers this to the more commonly used correlation, as it does not normalize for the mean and doesn't produce negative values. So his program begins with a specific journal and produces two files: one for all the journals whose citations to the given journal each represent at least 1% of the total citations of the given journal, and one for all the journals whose citations by the given journal each represent at least 1% of the total citations from the given journal. Each file contains the list of journal names, a matrix of cosines between each pair of journals, and a value indicating the proportion of the total journal-citation environment that each journal represents (controlling for within-journal citations). He provides this set of files for each of the social-science and science journals for 2003, 2004, and 2005. The data come from the Journal Citation Reports 2005 from the Social Science Citation Index (1712 journals total) provided at http://users.fmg.uva.nl/lleydesdorff/jcr04; for related programs, data, and publications, see http://users.fmg.uva.nl/lleydesdorff/.  Amazing!

 

So I downloaded the 2005 cited and citing data for the three ICA journals (JCMC was not yet included in ISI). Of course, one can also do this for each of any set of "communication" journals. These may include the Journal Citation Report's "core" communication journals, the Iowa Guide’s communication journals, or any other set one might want to compare (as long as they are included in the Social Science Citation Index).

 

Using UCINET and Netdraw, I produced the accompanying figures. These apply multidimensional scaling to the cosine matrices, arraying the journals according to their similarity in two-dimensional space. The area of the journal nodes is proportional to the extent to which each journal provides citations (in the "citing" figures) or receives citations (in the "cited" figures) within that set of journals, controlling for within-journal (self-) citations. The "cited" value represents the local impact in terms of citation volume, while the "citing" value represents "how the relevant journal environment is perceived by the collective authors of a given journal" (p. 25). One can also indicate the strength of citation links between the journals through proportionally thicker lines, but it becomes difficult to read. Additional network analyses are possible, as well, such as computing individual betweenness centrality of each journal. However, my purpose here is primarily impressionistic.

 

Communication Theory is cited primarily by Communication Research, Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, and Communication Monographs.  It also has small (but greater than 1%) citations from Health Communication, Media Psychology, and Journal of Health Communication. However, nearly all of its citations go to Communication Monographs, with just a few in its local citation environment to Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Thus, given the criterion for the local citation environment, Communication Theory's "audience" - those journals citing it - is much more diverse than its authors' perceptions of its primary environment.

 

Human Communication Research is embedded in a dense and diverse network of citing journals, including Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Journalism and Mass Communication, Political Communication, and, less frequently, Critical Studies in Mediated Communication, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, European Journal of Communication, Media/Culture/Society, New Media & Society, and Harvard International Journal of Press and Politics. Its citing environment (at least 1%) is far less dense, involving Communication Research, Communication Monographs, Journal of Communication, Journal of Social & Personal Relations, European Journal of Social Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychology Bulletin, and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

 

The Journal of Communication is similar to Human Communication Research in being embedded in a dense and diverse journal citation environment.  Most frequent citers of Journal of Communication articles include Communication Research, Human Communication Research, Common Monographs, Journalism and Mass Communication, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and Political Communication.  Other direct but less frequent citers in the environment include Journal of Public Opinion Research, Media Psychology, Harvard Journal of Press and Politics, New Media & Society, Media/Culture/Society, and European Journal of Communication. Also like HCR, JOC cites a few primary journals, including Communication Research, Communication Monographs, Political Communication, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Journalism and Mass Communication, Human Communication Research, and Public Opinion Quarterly.

 

These very brief summaries of only the 2005 data help to identify the local citation environments of the three print ICA journals - both the primary set of journals that authors in these ICA journals cite, and the (usually much fewer) primary set of journals whose authors cite articles from these ICA journals. Note that these analyses do not include the complete network of communication journals; they show only the local citing and cited environment from the perspective of each separate journal. Nor do they show the diffusion of citations infrequently received and given by the remaining  journals (those each with less than 1% of the total citations relating to the given journal).

 

This kind of analysis might be useful to editors, authors, and reviewers, for understanding better who their "audiences" are, in terms of scientific communication through citations. These may, of course, be quite different from the more usually understood concept of "audience" - those of us in ICA and elsewhere who read these articles.

 

Here is some literature on the reasons (normative, proposed, and empirically identified) for citing: 

 

Borgman, C.L. (Ed.) (1990). Scholarly communication and bibliometrics. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Broadus, R. (1983). An investigation of the validity of bibliographic citations.  Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 34(2), 132-135.

Brooks, T. (1985). Private acts and public objects: An investigation of citer motivations. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 36, 223-229.

Cano, V. (1989).  Citation behavior: Classification, utility, and location.  Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 40(4), 294-290.

Chubin, D. & Moitra, S. (1975). Content analysis of references: Adjunct of alternative to citation counting? Social Studies of Science, 5, 423-441.

Cronin, B. (1984).  The citation process.  London: Taylor Graham.

Funkhouser, E. (1996).  The evaluative use of citation analysis for communication journals.  Human Communication Research, 22(4), 563-574.

Garfield, E. (1972).  Citation analysis as a tool in journal evaluation.  Science, 178, 471-479.

Garfield, E. (1996).  When to cite.  Library Quarterly, 66, 449-458.

Gilbert, G.N. (1977). Referencing as persuasion.  Social Studies of Science, 7, 113-122.

Kaplan, N. (1965). The norms of citation behavior: Prolegomena to the footnote.  American Documentation, 16(3), 179-184.

Leydesdorff, L. (1998).  Theories of citation? Scientometrics, 43(1), 5-25.

Leydesdorff, L. (2007). Visualization of the citation impact environments of scientific journals: An online mapping exercise. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(1), 25-38.

Maricic, S., Spakventi, J., Pavicic, L, & Pifat-Mrzljak, G. (1998).  Citation context versus the frequency counts of citation histories.  Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 49, 387-399.

Oppenheim, C. & Renn, S. (1978).  Highly cited old papers and the reasons why they continue to be cited.  Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 29(5), 225-231.

Shadish, W., Tolliver, D. Gray, M. & Gupta, S. (1995).  Author judgments about works they cite: Three studies from psychology journals.  Social Studies of Science, 25, 477-497.

Small, H. (1978). Cited documents as concept symbols. Social Studies of Science, 8, 327-340.

Zuckerman, H. (1987). Citation analysis and the complex problem of intellectual influence.  Scientometrics, 12, 329-338.

 

And here is some work on communication journal citations.

 

These two use a variety of author citation, survey, vita, and archival data to look at the evolution of two competing research areas over a 10-year period:

 

Perry, C.A. & Rice, R.E. (1999). Network influences on involvement in the hybrid problem area of developmental dyslexia. Science Communication, 21(1), 64-100.

Perry, C. & Rice, R.E. (1997). Scholarly communication and network influences in the hybrid problem area of developmental dyslexia. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 49(2), 151-168.

 

These use a variety of citation data and analysis methods to assess author, concept, article, and journal networks:

 

Borgman, C. & Rice, R.E.  (1992). The convergence of information science and communication: A bibliometric analysis.  Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 43(6), 397-411. 

Rice, R.E., Chapin, J., Pressman, R., Park, S., & Funkhouser, E. (1996). What's in a name?  Bibliometric analysis of 40 years of the Journal of Broadcasting (and Electronic Media).  Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 40, 511-539.

Rice, R.E., Borgman, C. & Reeves, B.  (1988). Citation networks of communication journals, 1977-1985: Cliques and positions, citations made and citations received.  Human Communication Research, 15(2), 256-283.

Reeves, B. & Borgman, C. (1983).  A bibliographic evaluation of core journals in communication research. Human Communication Research, 10, 119-136.

So, C.Y. (1988). Citation patterns of core communication journals.  Human Communication Research, 15, 236-255.

 

This one applies content analysis to assess what are the primary purposes, based on the context of the citing article, for citations (i.e., methods, empirical review, theory), and what role the citations play in the citing paper.

 

Rice, R.E. & Crawford, G. (1992).  Context and content of citations between communication and library & information science articles.  In J. Schement & B. Ruben (Eds.) Information and behavior, vol. 4.  (pp. 189-217.)  New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press.

This one specifically looks at the validity and reliability of the citation data found in the Institute for Scientific Information's Journal Citation Report.

Rice, R.E., Borgman, C., Bednarski, D. & Hart, P.  (1989). Journal-to-journal citation data: Issues of reliability and validity.  Scientometrics, 15(3-4),257-282.

 

Communication Theory, Cited, 2004.

 

 

Communication Theory, Citing, 2004.

 

 

Human Communication Research, Cited, 2004.

 

 

Human Communication Research, Citing, 2004.

 

 

Journal of Communication, Cited, 2004.

 

 

Journal of Communication, Citing, 2004.