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Academic influence and invisible colleges through editorial board interlocking in communication sciences: a social network analysis of leading journals

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  • Manuel Goyanes

    (Carlos III University
    University of Salamanca, Political Science)

  • Luis de-Marcos

    (University of Alcalá)

Abstract

Editorial boards (EBs) play a crucial role in setting journals’ scientific output, generally determining what legitimate science is and thus establishing a benchmark on what should be published. EB members are generally prominent scholars in a given discipline and, as such, are habitually connected to several journals’ EB, a phenomenon known as editorial board interlocking. This exploratory study analyses the EB interlocking in a sample of communication journals. Specifically, we apply social network analysis to investigate how 41 JCR (Journal Citation Report) communication journals are connected through EB interlocking. Using graph theory and social network analysis, we identified the scholarly journal network, the high influential journals and scholars, and the cohesive subgroups (i.e. invisible colleges) within the communication field. Our findings shed some important light on the network structure of EBs in communication sciences, arguing that the exploration of editorial interlocks is a complemental approach to understand academic journals’ influence within academic fields.

Suggested Citation

  • Manuel Goyanes & Luis de-Marcos, 2020. "Academic influence and invisible colleges through editorial board interlocking in communication sciences: a social network analysis of leading journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 791-811, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:123:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-020-03401-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-020-03401-z
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. Alberto Baccini & Cristina Re, 2023. "Who are the gatekeepers of economics? Geographic diversity, gender composition, and interlocking editorship of journal boards," Papers 2304.04242, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    3. MaruÅ¡a Premru & Matej ÄŒerne & SaÅ¡a BatistiÄ, 2022. "The Road to the Future: A Multi-Technique Bibliometric Review and Development Projections of the Leader–Member Exchange (LMX) Research," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440221, May.
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    5. János József Tóth & Gergő Háló & Manuel Goyanes, 2023. "Beyond views, productivity, and citations: measuring geopolitical differences of scientific impact in communication research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(10), pages 5705-5729, October.
    6. Zhang, Tianjiao & Shi, Jin & Situ, Lingyun, 2021. "The correlation between author-editorial cooperation and the author’s publications in journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1).
    7. Manuel Goyanes & Márton Demeter & Zicheng Cheng & Homero Gil Zúñiga, 2022. "Measuring publication diversity among the most productive scholars: how research trajectories differ in communication, psychology, and political science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(6), pages 3661-3682, June.
    8. Manuel Goyanes & Márton Demeter & Aurea Grané & Tamás Tóth & Homero Gil Zúñiga, 2023. "Research patterns in communication (2009–2019): testing female representation and productivity differences, within the most cited authors and the field," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(1), pages 137-156, January.
    9. Baccini, Federica & Barabesi, Lucio & Baccini, Alberto & Khelfaoui, Mahdi & Gingras, Yves, 2022. "Similarity network fusion for scholarly journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1).

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