A PEER-REVIEW OF PEER-REVIEW: ANALYZING DIFFERING METHODOLOGIES ACROSS MEDIA STUDIES AND COMMUNICATION JOURNALS
Date
2024
Authors
Tokos, Lauren
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
The academic disciplines of media studies and communication broadly analyze media’s social, political, cultural, and industrial effects – both practically and theoretically. While many media studies and communication scholars discuss their research in mainstream media, scholarly publications are the primary mechanism used to disseminate academic research findings. This project analyzes the journal publishing ecosystem in media studies and communication, focusing on journals’ peer-review methods and relationships with governing entities (i.e. corporate publishers, learned societies, etc.). Semi-structured, phenomenological interviews are the main method of investigation for this project, followed by thematic coding using the qualitative data analysis platform, Dedoose. Eleven, 60–90-minute interviews were conducted between November 2023 and February 2024, yielding ten transcripts (one interviewee declined to be recorded) and extensive field notes. Participants are editors at generalized and specialized journals in media studies and communication; 73% of journals interviewed are owned by corporate publishers, while 27% are owned by not-for-profit publishing entities. Additionally, of the 73% of journals owned by corporate publishers, half were affiliated with learned societies, while the other half were not. Of the 23% of journals owned by not-for-profit publishing entities, 18% were affiliated with learned societies, while 9% were not. The associative demographics of
Description
Keywords
Academic publishing, Journal publishing, Critical political economy, Scholarly communication, Global knowledge production