Abstract

Although the field of Communication Sciences has been slower to organize in Spain than in other European countries and the United States, in recent years it has shown a clear tendency to growth. One way to trace this process is by analyzing scientific production, and this paper focuses on this aspect. Using bibliometric methods, we analyze scientific journals and papers indexed in Thomson Reuter’s international database, the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) for Communication. While the focus of the study is Spanish scientific output, the results are related to international activities in this field. The three Spanish journals included in SSCI in recent years: «Comunicar», «Comunicación y Sociedad» and «Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico» were studied in detail. The results show that Spain plays an important role in Communcation journal publishing (4th in the world) and as a producer of scientific papers (6th in the world), with a remarkable evolution, in quantitative terms, especially in the last five years. The inclusion of these three Spanish journals in the international database has been an important contribution to the country's visibility in this field, but there is still a need to promote international collaboration to achieve greater impact and openness in the scientific community.

Abstract

Visibility in the Web of Science databases differs between the hard sciences and the social sciences, and between scholarship in English and in other languages. Quantitative data for 2006 are offered for SCI, SSCI, and AHCI, along with the author’s observations. The Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) has developed suggestions to reduce the marginalization of the social sciences and Spanish liberal arts in citations.