Rankings and Trends in Citation Patterns of Communication Journals.

Journal citations are increasingly used as indicators of the impact of scholarly work. Because many communication journals are not included in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), SSCI impact factors are potentially misleading for communication journals. The current paper reports a citation analysis of 30 communication journals based on Google Scholar. Journals are ranked in terms of citations and trend data are examined. The findings show that journal rankings based on citations are changing over time with National Communication Association and regional journals dropping in citation rankings and while some more focused specialty journals are increasing in the citation rankings. The results also show that Institute for Scientific Information citations are biased and do not accurately or evenly reflect citations to communication research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]