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Publishing

These resources provide varying details on journals in the MeJo field.

  • Journal Citation Reports (JCR)
    Quantitative measures for ranking, evaluating, categorizing, and comparing journals, including the journal impact factor, a measurement of a journal’s importance to a field. From ISI. Lists many (but not all) journals in Communication, but not many in journalism.
  • Scimago Journal Rank (SJR)
    Lists journal and country scientific indicators developed Elsevier B.V., a competitor to ISI’s Journal Citation Report. Lists many (but not all) journals in Communication, but not many in journalism.
  • Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities
    Acceptance/rejection rates for select journals, plus other information about the review process, the manuscript requirements, and contact information. Searching is tricky; ask Stephanie for details. Not all journals included.
  • Ulrichsweb
    Provides detailed information on serials published throughout the world. Data often includes circulation, cost, brief history of publication.  Sometimes includes reviews from library publications. Frequently indicates where journal is indexed.

Open Access

Open access (OA) “is the free, online availability of scholarly content that is free from most copyright and licensing restrictions” (per UNC’s guide to Open Access and Scholarly Communications).
Tips for determining if an open access journal is reputable.

  • Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) list of members
    If a journal is a member of OASPA, it is very likely a reputable title which adheres to best practices for maintaining and disseminating OA scholarly communications.
  • Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) includes a list of over 100 journals in Media and communication
    If a journal is listed in the library-maintained DOAJ, it is likely a reputable title.


See UNC Library’s guide Preparing to Publish for more tips on finding and evaluating open access journals.
See also Yale Library’s comprehensive guide Choosing a Journal for Publication of an Article for additional resources. Not all of these are available at UNC.

Check Citation Counts

Use Web of Science, Google Scholar and Scopus to check citation counts for authors or journals. Examples:

  • Measure your research impact: check out this excellent guide created by UNC’s Health Sciences Library.
  • Search Web of Science for the article titled “Pandemics In The Age Of Twitter: Content Analysis Of Tweets During The 2009 H1N1 Outbreak.” You’ll see that it’s been cited over 300 times since its publication in 2010.
  • Search Google Scholar for the article “Pandemics In the Age Of Twitter”  You’ll see that it’s been cited over over 800 times since its publication.  Check out Scopus for the “Pandemics” article as well.  As you can see, the databases return varying results.
  • Search Google Scholar for the journal PLos One. You’ll see that multiple articles in this journal have been been cited hundreds of times, lending the open access title lots of credibility.  
  • Search Scopus for Seth Noar’s article “Mind the gap: bringing our theories in line with the empirical data – a response to commentaries.” This will take you to the article and citations for its references.  If you click on Noar’s name, you’ll see he has 91 documents that have been cited 2,687 times.
  • Search WorldCat for books by Chris Roush. You’ll see a listing for “16 works in 60 publications in 2 languages and 2,780 library holdings” (as of 07/25/18). Ask Stephanie to see how many times any (or all) of these items has been borrowed from the UNC-Chapel Hill libraries.
  • Search the Open Syllabus Project for a specific work, or browse the readings assigned in the disciplines of Media, Journalism, and Communication. The Project has collected over “1 million syllabi, has extracted citations and other metadata from them” and makes the metadata freely available online.

Finding Scholars

Doing Peer Review?

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