It is an honor and pleasure to serve as the editor of Review of Communication for volumes thirteen through fifteen (2013-2015). My commitment to Review of Communication lies in fostering and deepening the intellectually cosmopolitan tradition of the journal and its continuing mission of examining key issues and controversies in communication studies, major trends in current research, and the history and philosophy of communication. Under the leadership of the previous editors, particularly immediate past editor Ronald C. Arnett, Review has become a unique venue for robust interpretive work, surveys of the current state of scholarship, and new pathways for future research. Review of Communication publishes scholarship that advances the discipline of communication through the study of major themes that cross disciplinary sub-fields. While other journals feature strong micro-level case studies, Review is an ideal and unique space for studies of broad trends, topoi, and impasses in the study of communication. Such macro-interpretive studies may be historical, theoretical, philosophical, qualitative, quantitative, rhetorical, or syncretic, but they share the purpose of moving scholarship forward by providing clarity, insight, nuance, or sophistication to our understanding of where we are and where we have been.
In this way, the mission of Review of Communication for the next three years is to push forward the journal's recent momentum in publishing broad and thoughtful scholarship, which I see as a natural maturation of founding editor Thomas W. Benson's original vision for the journal. In Benson's F.A.Q. for the first years of Review, he articulated this kind of meta-level role and mission. Particularly in Sections 3, 4, and 5 of that document he laid out a vision for the journal as a space to provide "contextual detail" for current work in communication, to take a "descriptive/narrative or meta-analytic approach to the literature," or to "examine the history and current practices of knowledge production and distribution in the discipline." Over the past thirteen years of leadership by Benson, James Chesebro, Raymie McKerrow, and Arnett the journal as blossomed into a distinctive and distinguished part of the communication studies discipline. My primary goal as editor is to build upon their work and solidify the role of Review of Communication in our field.
In the coming years Review of Communication also will seek to become a showcase for books and research in communication by situating those publications within broader disciplinary and interdisciplinary conversations. In addition to scholarly essays and research, we seek lengthier review essays in which reviewers not only discuss a constellation of books, but connect recent works in communication studies to adjacent disciplines as a device to explore trends, norms, or themes across the humanities and social sciences.
Volume 13 of Review of Communication marks a number of important changes for the journal. First, we are transitioning to the Chicago Manual of Style, a move we hope will further broaden the readership as well as encourage a wide range of authors. From this issue forward, we ask all authors to adopt the end-note citation system from the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. Second, building upon the precedent of the previous editor, we have further expanded the maximum length for submissions to 9,000 words. Both of these moves will facilitate more expansive and thoughtful work and enable authors to make greater connections across the many periods, specialties, fields, and disciplines in which we find communication scholarship.
As we approach the centennial of the National Communication Association and its first journal, The Quarterly Journal of Speech, we enter a time of significant reflection and forecasting. As we look back at a century of American communication studies, taking stock of where we have been and how we came to this moment, Review of Communication offers both authors and readers the kind of synthesis, synopsis, and syncretism that can facilitate our planning new shared futures for the century to come.