The Journal of Communication and the Field of Communication Studies: Mapping Scientific Communication Online

In this study, the authors have three objectives: 1. To make aggregated journal-journal citation networks based on the Journal Citation Reports 2004 of the Science Citation Index (5968 journals) and the Social Science Citation Index (1712 journals) accessible online from the perspective of any of these journals. The results are available at http://www.leydesdorff.net/jcr04 as input-files for the visualization program Pajek. The user is thus able to analyze the citation environment of a scientific journal, for example, in terms of core groups and peripheries. 2. To study the journal structure of communication studies as a discipline using the Journal of Communication as an example. Communication studies can be considered as a single field from the perspective of “being cited,” but it is divided into two communities who reconstruct the field differently by making references. 3. To replace the notion of a global impact factor with that of a local impact factor relative to a journal’s citation environment. The local impact of a journal in its citation environment can be defined as its share of the total citations in this environments. The vertical size of the nodes is varied proportionally to this citation impact; the horizontal axis of each node will be used to provide the same information after correction for within-journal (self-)citations.