Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end …
It is a tremendous honor and privilege to serve as Editor of Communication Monographs – a premier journal in the communication discipline. It is also a tremendous responsibility, and I am grateful to my colleagues for entrusting the stewardship of this prestigious journal to my care. As the lyrics from Semisonic remind us, the beginning of my Editorship comes as my predecessor, Dr. Tamara Afifi, transitions out of an illustrious term as Editor-in-Chief of the journal. Under her guidance, the journal raised its impact factor, published innovative and socially impactful findings, and maintained a highly selective acceptance rate of 10%. As a member of her editorial board, I witnessed firsthand her editorial acumen – her ability to be fair but firm in upholding the standards of the journal, to help authors bring the best out of their own work, and to be truthful yet courteous and kind when rendering editorial decisions. She has also been a tremendous mentor and resource to me as I transition into this important role. On behalf of the discipline, I thank Dr Afifi and her editorial board for their thoughtful and tireless contributions to the journal.
I will never forget the first time I submitted a manuscript (from my dissertation, no doubt) to a top tier journal in our field. When I received the decision letter, I was not only disappointed that my work had been rejected, but I was confused by the criterion used to arrive at the final decision. Before providing a set of thoughtful and insightful suggestions, both the Editor and the reviewers said that my work was well-written, that the methods were appropriate and well executed, and that the findings were potentially publishable. Yet, in the end, they decided that my work should be submitted to an alternative journal, as the contributions of my research did not rise to the level of a top tier journal. Looking back at that important moment in my early career, I now know that they were right. My manuscript was good, but not great scholarship – it did not pass the bar or exceed the expectations set for premier scholarship in our field. I also know that I am not alone, as I have heard countless stories from other colleagues in the field who have received similar decision letters at different points in their career.
So what is the bar? How might we differentiate good from great communication scholarship, especially given that the latter is what we typically seek to publish in our premier journals? As was the experience of my predecessor, Dr Afifi, I too learned in graduate school that Communication Monographs is one of the “gold standards” for publishing communication research. It showcases work that begins with a great idea, asks important questions, frames those questions using a strong theoretical rationale, addresses them with rich data sets and appropriate methods, and produces findings that make a substantial contribution and possess potential for social impact. Although it might be tempting to view these criteria as formulaic for success, the truth is they can be highly subjective within the minds of different editors and reviewers. Thus, I will attempt to address the larger question of what the “bar” will be during my Editorship by using these criteria as a starting point for differentiating good from great communication scholarship. In what follows, I outline five qualities that distinguish good work from the best work that warrants publication in Communication Monographs. Please note, however, that these qualities are not mutually exclusive nor are they exhaustive.
First, good research addresses thoughtful questions, whereas great research addresses thought-provoking questions. Not all research endeavors are created equal. Although good research questions are thoughtful and can make meaningful contributions to the literature, great research questions possess exigency and are provocative, insightful, and heuristic. They set the table for a strong rationale and address the “So what?” question. Great questions are posed with care and can span a variety of areas in communication – from organizational and group communication, interpersonal and relational communication, and health and family communication, to political communication, media studies, language and social interaction, and intercultural communication and cultural studies, to name a few. More importantly, the best questions foreground the systematic investigation of social interaction, messages, discourses, talk, and/or dialogue, rather than locate communication in the background or in the periphery of the research.
Second, good research references communication theory, whereas great research advances communication theory. One of the primary objectives of Communication Monographs, if not the objective, is to advance our theoretical understanding of communication processes. All too often as a reviewer, I read manuscripts that were either variable-analytic or briefly referenced a particular theory without clearly articulating how the theory was being used to investigate the specific questions or predictions under consideration. I also reviewed a number of manuscripts where authors failed to tie their findings back to theory or to advance theory in new ways. Of course, there are different types of theories that strive to accomplish different types of goals depending upon the paradigmatic assumptions of the researchers. From the explanations that flow from the deductive reasoning of post-positivist scholars, to the grounded theories that emerge from the inductive reasoning of interpretive scholars, to the sensitizing theories that provide heuristic and insightful lenses for critique, the best scholarship privileges and advances communication theory regardless of the scholars’ paradigmatic orientation.
Third, good research uses the right method, whereas great research uses the right method well. Admittedly, this quality of great scholarship is more difficult to articulate than the previous two. Although good scholarship uses an acceptable set of research methods, great scholarship displays a certain acumen in methodology. In quantitative research, for example, this distinction can be seen when scholars undermine or limit the potential impact of their findings by (a) relying on convenience samples that are overly homogenous, (b) using less-than-ideal measures, (c) inferring causal claims from cross-sectional and/or correlational data, (d) analyzing individuals as the unit of analysis when dyads or groups would be more appropriate, or (e) only telling part of the “story” by relying solely on multivariate findings to draw erroneous conclusions about bivariate associations. In qualitative research, the distinction can be seen in how researchers use a particular sensitizing theory to frame, conduct, and interrogate the experiences, discourses, or dialogue under investigation. Using the right methods well also involves understanding the limitations of the method and explicating how those limitations contextualize the knowledge claims of the study. Although the review process can sometimes help researchers move their work from good to great, when the deficiencies are inherent to the research design, the absence of methodological acumen can serve as a litmus test for whether or not the work should be published in a top tier journal.
Fourth, good research produces new findings, whereas great research produces newsworthy findings. This is not to say that the ultimate value of any given study is contingent on statistically significant results or on a particular set of themes. Some of the most informative findings occur when researchers fail to reject the null hypothesis or find that participants’ experiences do not align with what extant theory would suggest. Nor is it meant to convey that replication is unimportant, as the ability to repeat the research process and determine whether a given set of findings can be reproduced is a cornerstone of communication science. Rather, this quality speaks to the ambitiousness of the research and the degree to which the findings teach us something noteworthy about human interaction. Do the findings possess both theoretical and pragmatic implications? What type of social impact are the results likely to make? Do the findings possess an intrinsic appeal that invite increased readership? These are but a few of the questions that help clarify the distinction between new findings and newsworthy findings.
Finally, good research is written for a relatively narrow and specialized audience, whereas great research is written for a relatively broad and global audience. In essence, the best research is accessible and of interest to a wide variety of readers. This quality speaks not only to how well a manuscript is written, but also to how much it appeals to the broad readership that Communication Monographs seeks to serve. One of the ongoing concerns expressed by my predecessor and others in our field is the increasing specialization that separates scholars into relatively small, and entrenched, silos of expertise. At times, these silos can prevent fruitful conversations from occurring across sub-disciplines within our field, as well as discourage collaborative, interdisciplinary scholarship. Although there is tremendous value in publishing programmatic research that deepens our understanding of the subtle nuances of specific domains within communication, oftentimes, this is done at the expense of accessibility and reader appeal. When this occurs, reviewers may suggest alternative outlets for the authors’ work, comment on the difficulty of understanding the overall message or central value of the research, or suggest that the focus of the research is too narrow for the journal. Given no shortage of specialty journals within which to publish niche research, the scholarship that Communication Monographs publishes will provide newsworthy findings that appeal to a cosmopolitan audience.
In the end, there are subtle, but important differences between research that is publishable and research that is publishable in Communication Monographs. Put simply, my goal as editor is to publish the best communication scholarship – scholarship that includes a wide variety of contexts and social scientific methods from across multiple disciplines and sub-disciplines. There are also important differences between adequate reviews and editing, and the best reviews and editing that authors should expect from our flagship journals. As we look forward to another promising decade of communication scholarship, I pledge to provide the latter and continue the tradition of excellence established by my predecessors and colleagues in the field. Thank you for the honor and privilege of editing this prestigious journal and I look forward to reading your work.