Data without reference points: collaborations in communication research in Spain are less international and publications have lower impact

Abstract

Although comparisons are unpopular, they help to establish standard frames of reference to assess the situation of individuals, institutions, or countries. In the field of communication, the meta-research has been prolific in examining the current state of its production, but has ignored the need to compare what this research is with respect to what it should be, thus offering descriptions without reference points. During the last decade in Spain, have the co-authorships in communication been international? And perhaps even more importantly, has the published output been top-tier? In this study, I try to answers these gaps in the literature by comparing communication research in Spain with two broad frames of reference: the set of all sciences and the set of all social sciences. The results show that, when compared with these two macro references, communication research collaborations lack international cooperation and are quite solitary. Similarly, communication research releases fewer publications in the first quartile but more in the second, third, and fourth quartiles. The study suggests that research in terms of international collaboration and level of publication output is below the expected standard and emphasizes the need to establish comparative frameworks to assess and evaluate the state of the field beyond descriptive or headline data (as in this article).