Advancing the Common Core Knowledge in Journalism and Mass Communication

Abstract

It is a great honor and humbling experience for me to assume my position as the tenth editor of the Quarterly or Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly (JMCQ), the flagship journal of Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). First, I would like to thank my predecessor, Dan Riffe, who served JMCQ for the past fourteen years, for his mentorship when I was associate editor for the journal, and for his tremendous help during the transition. With my team of associate editors, David Atkin, Hong Cheng, Carolyn Kitch, Wilson Lowrey, and book review editor, Ron Rodgers, and the support of the AEJMC Publications Committee, I hope we can take JMCQ to a new height in this highly competitive academic journal publishing landscape with a plethora of communication journals, either in open access or subscription formats. Our new editorial advisory board members, who are accomplished scholars from across the globe, will add more international perspectives in our review process and help further globalize the impact of the journal with more geographical, institutional, and ethnic diversity.Print and Online PresencesI began my official term as the new editor by asking our readers and media scholars about their views of the journal through a readership survey. I am thankful to the 1,142 respondents who participated in the survey. The survey results revealed that among AEJMC member respondents, only 18.4% JMCQ exclusively online, while 69% either the print issue or both print and online versions. Based on the survey data, an article on the concern of journal impact factor and how media scholars' attributes affected the rating of JMCQ is included in this issue for our readers' reference.I would like to cultivate a regular reading habit of our print issue readers by our new regular features in each issue and let them know what to anticipate in every issue (see the new features of the journal below). AEJMC members will receive an electronic Table of Contents with links to article abstracts for every upcoming issue of JMCQ. To increase our online presence and fully utilize the JMCQ website and other social media, we will disseminate all accepted submissions as fast as we can as OnlineFirst articles on the JMCQ website at http://jmcq.sagepub.com/ and tweet about them on my official JMCQ Twitter account @LouisaHaJMCQ. Our JMCQ readers and authors who are on Twitter are strongly encouraged to follow it and retweet the postings. In addition, JMCQ website users will be able to find our read and cited articles based on our Hitwise online data and find answers to our most commonly asked questions.New Features of JMCQ1. Review essays by senior scholarsThere are several new regular features in JMCQ, beginning this issue. There will be a regular review essay of a major theoretical or methodological topic written by senior scholars in every issue. These essays are commissioned and blind-refereed by two or three senior scholars in the field. As a leader in the field, we hope to provide standards, best practices, and state-of-the-art reviews on these topics as a crash course for junior scholars and a refresher course for senior scholars. The first review essay this year is former associate editor and current editorial board member JeffSmith's review of media history articles. The choice is deliberate. JMCQ values both quantitative and qualitative research. Because of the change to American Psychological Association (APA) style, some may think JMCQ is discouraging qualitative or historical research. Jeff's essay helps both history researchers and nonhistory researchers to understand the contemporary implication of historical research and explains the standards for high-quality historical research for publication in our journal.2. Virtual theme collectionsThe second important new feature is our virtual theme collections of past JMCQ articles online. JMCQ, with its ninety years of history and as a prestigious flagship journal, has contributed many important pieces of scholarship on a wide variety of areas for our field. …