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

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.