Research into journalism in Spain: sizeable, but neither international nor impactful

Abstract

Until 2021, studies of scientific disciplines took as their object of study papers published in journals from certain subject categories. This paper is one of the firsts to analyse research into journalism in Spain using the Clarivate InCites analytics platform algorithm that groups papers together according to their citation relations (Citation Topics, CT) rather than by the category of the journals themselves. A unique universe was obtained made up of 63,694 items on the Web of Science, this being the global output of the CT ‘Journalism’ (1980–2022, both included). Spain is the world’s third producer by number of items (4635), but only seventh in citations (and has the lowest proportion of citations per paper, 7.151). Most of the papers (34.01%) are published in Q3 (unlike the rest of the countries analysed, which publish more in Q1 and Q2) and in national journals (61%, even more than the US or the UK, 52% and 47%, respectively), edited by small, non-commercial publishers. Only 40.6% of the items are in the WoS Flagship citation index databases (SCIE, SSCI and AHCI). Most Spanish journals publish national research in proportions around 80%. Spanish research tends to collaborate internationally to a lesser extent (16.5%) than the other European countries analysed, and no significant change has been apparent over the last years. Spanish research into journalism is very productive but has little international presence, obtains few citations per paper, and shows no clear signs of progress towards greater international collaboration.