The new Journalism & Mass
Communication Quarterly new submission length and theory requests
are below the signature information.
Professor E-K. Daufin, Ph.D.
Department of Communications
334.229.6885
Lectures,
Performances, Workshops, Consultation:
http://home.earthlink.net/~daufin
The Mars
& Venus Diet & Exercise Solution: http://ekdaufin.isagenix.com
Afrocentric
Photoart Calendar:
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly is
published by AEJMC, and while it attracts scholarship and draws readership from
outside the association, its origin within the ninety-three-year-old
association helps explain what Quarterly has
become. The association is made up of 3,400 members, seventeen divisions, and
ten interest groups. Within those divisions and interest groups are scholars
at different stages of their research careers, actively pursuing a broad and
varied range of scholarly topics, employing diverse methods and working within
a number of paradigms.
Not surprisingly, the many studies submitted to and published in Quarterly reflect that diversity and range
of activities: historical, legal, qualitative, and social science inquiries
that examine the many forms and processes of journalism and mass communication,
and that may vary across individual, organizational, institutional, or societal
levels of analysis.
Indeed, by some standards the success of a publication serving the
field is its ability to present the best work representing all of those many
interests and approaches. Distinctive individual pieces collectively reflect
the field.
At the same time, Quarterly
can serve a role of presenting scholarship that cuts across specialties, makes
connections, and encourages interdisciplinarity, and that addresses broad
issues, themes, and theories in the field. In each issue, in fact, we invite
scholars to employ “a variety of methods and theoretical perspectives,”
to “challenge the boundaries of communication research,” and to
guide readers “to new questions, new evidence, and new
conclusions.”
The importance of this mission statement has been reaffirmed and
emphasized by the discussions that followed the release of the recommendations
of the Task Force on the Status and Future of AEJMC Publications. To this end,
the editors of Journalism & Mass
Communication Quarterly are committed to publishing such
theory-building work, whether it takes the form of an inductive process of
creating theoretical propositions from existing scholarship, or develops
through a deductive approach; whether it represents theory-building within a
“narrow” area (risk communication, media economics, agenda setting,
etc.) or cuts across such areas; and whether it emerges from a social science
or critical paradigm.
Similarly, we remain committed to our goal of publishing manuscripts
that examine the relationship of our research methods to our theories or that
provide historical perspective on the field. The Spring 2003 issue challenged
readers and contributors to make Quarterly “the
venue for submissions examining both basic and sophisticated methodological
questions.”
In order to serve the diversity of scholarly methods and approaches in
our field, Journalism & Mass
Communication Quarterly has recently added additional pages per
volume to permit more flexibility in manuscript length and to expand the book
review section. Quarterly has
expanded the traditional 5,000-word manuscript guideline to 6,000 words for
manuscripts not employing tabular material. At the same time, we have adopted
a process used by several leading journals: manuscript reviewers will be asked
to offer an assessment of a manuscript’s length-to-contribution
“ratio.” If reviewers recommend shortening or lengthening a piece,
that recommendation will inform the editor’s decision and any revision
process.
The Journalism & Mass
Communication Quarterly editors hope the increased word limit for
non-quantitative manuscripts will encourage the submission of more
theory-building and methodology-oriented manuscripts that cut across the
boundaries of communication research. As in the past, Quarterly will continue its process of
rigorously reviewing all manuscripts and will continue to welcome studies
addressing important topics of journalism and mass communication from the
diverse interests and approaches that mark our field.