Introduction

The papers and essays published in the journal Comunicación y Sociedad (Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico) represent a sample of how the field of study of communication has developed and transformed in the Ibero-American region, its objects of analysis, the most recurrent theoretical paradigms, as well as the newest ones, the methodologies that have prevailed, the new ones, the constant themes throughout the decades, the changes and transformations in the uses and appropriations of technologies, the challenges in human communication, the evolution of theories, etcetera.

There is a large number of communication journals in international databases and indexes. Such is the case of Latindex, which contains, since its foundation and until 2021, 320 journals from Latin America, Spain and Portugal, according to ^{Montero and Garrido (2021)}, but there are few journals in the field of communication and in this territory that have prevailed for more than 35 years.

To give continuity to the analysis applied in 2017 by Gómez-Rodríguez et al. on the occasion of the 30th anniversary (with the article “30 years of Comunicación y Sociedad: changes and permanence in the academic field of communication”), it was decided to analyze from the same methodology, although with some adaptations to current issues, the development of the articles published in this journal from September 2016 to December 2022 and, thus, to study in a more holistic way the historical corpus considering, for this and also, the works carried out by ^{Tovar (1997)} and ^{Rodríguez and García (2007)}.

Context

In the last decade, the world of academic hemerography has been radically transformed. Editorial processes are carried out, almost exclusively, through electronic platforms and tools. The consumption of science has also been modified: academics, evaluators, editors and readers have had to learn about new models and instruments of editorial and scientometric management, new languages and, at the same time, there is the challenge of reaching a greater number of audiences and readers.

In this enormous transformation of publishing processes, moreover, science publishing has become more commercialized than ever: there are powerful publishing houses that monopolize the journal world, mainly in the English language. These publishers charge the user different types of payments to access articles and, for authors, an equivalent fee to carry out the publication process (technically known as article processing charges or APC’s).

As ^{Rogel-Salazar et al. (2017)} point out, most of the journals in the field of communication indexed in Web of Science (WoS) are published in the United States and England, which together account for 84.1% of them. By 2015, there were three commercial publishers concentrating 68.3% of these journals in JCR-WoS: Routledge Taylor & Francis (32.9%), Sage Publications (27.8%), and Wiley-Blackwell (7.6%) (p. 177). A consequence of the concentration of commercial publishers in communication is that 73 journals (92.4%) are paid access and only 6 (7.6%) are open access (^{Rogel-Salazar et al., 2017}).

In response to the commodification of science, there have appeared, at least since 2002 (^{Xalabarder, 2006, p. 5}), different efforts that promote Open Access to Knowledge (OAK), which means, for the institutions and publishers that join it, that readers access journal papers and books openly without requiring any payment for their consult. The ideal of this proposal implies, from its origin, that the dissemination and diffusion of scientific activity permeate and cross-cut, through the Internet and digitization, in peripheral and satellite countries and demographic segments: something impossible to imagine just a few decades ago.

Although OAK cannot be classified as a movement or a uniform political program, given the large number of proposals, practical guidelines and legal mechanisms for their implementation, it can be affirmed that all the labels assimilated to the concept of “open access to knowledge” subscribe homogeneously to a common political ideology, which is to provide, immediately and historically, mechanisms for access to academic, scientific and technical information free of charge, expeditiously and of high quality to any citizen in the global world.

Among the current initiatives that vigorously join this program are the Copyleft projects and, mainly in the publishing and documentary area, Creative Commons, a project that provides legal mechanisms for authors and users to share creative and intellectual products equally and horizontally, safeguarding the moral and patrimonial rights of creators in the transition between generation and consumption.

As part of this historical commitment, Comunicación y Sociedad (CyS) has become an Open Access publication by subscribing to Creative Commons licenses and being a signatory of the international agreement dora (Declaration on Research Assessment). This has implied not only not following the practices of cost shifting to users or authors practiced by many commercial publishers, but seeking ways to disseminate science so that it is “open” and reaches not only academics and students, but also a more general public. Before elaborating on how CyS has ventured into other electronic formats, we will present a brief description of the path followed by the journal 35 years after its foundation.

Context of the development of Comunicación y Sociedad

The journal Comunicación y Sociedad first appeared in 1987 and was founded at the then Centro de Estudios de la Información y la Comunicación (CEIC), now the Departamento de Estudios de la Comunicación Social (DECS), at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico. Throughout its existence, the publication has gone through different stages and technologies for its production, periodicities, editors, challenges and growth (^{Gómez-Rodríguez et al., 2017}). The most important change in recent years was to leave behind paper printing and move, in 2015, to the electronic format. In addition, since 2017, texts are also published in English, and the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is added to the published articles, as well as presentations of thematic sections (see Table 2). As shown in Figure 1, the journal has had different stages that have presented challenges for its editors and staff, as well as for the institution.

Source: The authors.

Figure 1 Stages of Comunicación y Sociedad (1987-2022) 

There are few journals in the field of communication in Mexico. A study by ^{López-Ornelas et al. (2017)} mentions the existence of only 12 journals, both academic and dissemination. Among those that stand out the most are Culturas Contemporáneas, Versión. Estudios de Comunicación y Política, Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, Revista Mexicana de Comunicación, Revista de Ciencias Sociales, Zócalo,⁵Razón y Palabra, and Comunicación y Sociedad. Some are not entirely focused on the area of communication, but are linked to broader topics, as can be seen in their titles.

It is important to mention that there have been other publications, but they have disappeared. Currently in force are Global Media Journal México,⁶ published by the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León and Texas A&M International University (based in Laredo, Texas); Virtualis, published by the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Guadalajara campus; Balajú, Revista de Cultura y Comunicación, from Universidad Veracruzana, and Revista Panamericana de Comunicación, by Universidad Panamericana.

Methodology

The present research was developed from a quantitative perspective and a comparative-descriptive design. We selected the corpus from the last analysis conducted by ^{Gómez-Rodríguez et al. (2017)}, who examined articles and essays published from 2004 to issue 26 of 2016. It was decided to use the same variables and systematization sheet, as well as the codebook designed for the 2017 study. In this work, the corpus is composed of 186 publications that were counted from issue 27 (September 2016) to December 2022. For the systematization of the data, ^{Fuentes’ (2004)} proposal was used regarding the analyzed media (academic field, press and print, cinema, radio, television and video, Internet and digital, media as a whole, other objects) (p. 19), and the approach of ^{Jensen (2014)} was included, who makes a classification about media in three levels: 1) human field (oral and written language); 2) institutions and one-to-many communication practices (books, press, photo, cinema, radio, television); 3) digital technologies (see ^{Gómez-Rodríguez et al., 2017}). For the analysis of theoretical approaches, we turned to ^{Craig (1999)}, who classifies the traditions of communication theory into seven: 1) rhetorical, 2) semiotic, 3) phenomenological, 4) cybernetic, 5) socio-psychological, 6) sociocultural, and 7) critical.

As mentioned, the same coding designed for the work carried out in 2017 was used, however, to adapt to this study, some modifications were made: variables related to digital culture were added (participatory culture, transmedia, multiscreen, since no works related to these topics had appeared in the analyses carried out previously). Likewise, the analysis of new communicative phenomena implies the design and application of other methodologies and the use of new tools, therefore methodologies such as big data, social network analysis, as well as a combination of methodologies were included in the systematization base; it was also decided to be more specific when it comes to works that use statistical analysis as a central method.¹⁰

On the other hand, the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform, from which the journal is managed, made it possible to extract data to obtain systematizations that have been very useful to organize the periods analyzed by authors, geographical areas and institutional origin, gender, type of collaboration (local, national, international), among others.

To understand the evolution of the journal’s publications, not only in the aforementioned period but throughout its history (1987-2022),¹¹ a comparative analytical emphasis was given through time in some of the lines we are interested in comparing, recovering the texts and data obtained by ^{Tovar (1997)}, ^{Rodríguez and García (2007)} and ^{Gómez-Rodríguez et al. (2017)}, who, at the time, performed both bibliometric and content analyses to the journal. It is important to clarify that it was not possible to work the comparative analysis in all the dimensions covered in the current proposal due to the methodological differences of each study.

A criterion to be contemplated for the construction of the corpus of information was to omit materials such as interviews, book reviews and presentations of the thematic sections written by the coordinators of each edition.

Within the dimensions considered for the recovery of information and subsequent analysis, it is kept in mind that editorial decisions set guidelines in the results obtained, especially for the thematic sections that have been incorporated into the journal since 2017, as they bias the results with respect to the results of the most recurrent themes.

Results

Although the papers submitted follow the lines oriented by each researcher, it is important to consider that the proposal of the journal in relation to publications in thematic calls may influence certain contents. However, having analyzed a period with different thematic issues, it is possible to minimize the role played by this editorial decision in the reception of papers.

As mentioned above, the totality of texts published between the months of September 2016 and December 2022 was analyzed, having a corpus of 186 documents, of which 85% are empirical papers and the remaining 15% correspond to essays. It should be noted that this is not a mirror sample, i.e., the categories and indicators are not equivalent in both corpora; thus, in this work we seek to compare them, but not to contrast them insofar as the first stage analyzed (2004 to August 2016) is a longer period compared to the second stage (September 2016 to December 2022).

The trend in the type of publications submitted shows an increase of 24% of empirical articles (85%) compared to 61% of articles submitted in the 2004-2016 period (^{Gómez-Rodríguez et al., 2017}), thus achieving the desirable 75% of empirical papers requested by various international indexes.

Authorship provenance (comparative of four periods of analysis)

When considering authorship provenance -according to the institution of adscription- it can be emphasized that international publications have increased from the birth of the journal to the present, while the opposite trend, i.e., a continuous reduction, has been reflected in local publications. On the other hand, publications of national origin have had an irregular presence, with a downward trend in some periods reviewed and an increase in others (Figure 2).

Source: The authors.

Figure 2 Origin of authorship of publications over time 

We have observed, since 2017, that Spanish researchers seek to publish more in Latin American journals located in high quartiles in international indexes (Scopus and WoS), given that there are very few first quartile Spanish-written journals in the discipline’s environment, and these are based, basically, in Spain (it is worth mentioning that in Latin America journals are positioned in quartiles 2, 3 and 4, with absence of 1). To a large extent, it is believed, this trend is the natural result of the much earlier historical presence of Spain in the field’s development, the consequent primacy in the disciplinarization of research and the natural diversification of its empirical activity.

When the nationality of the authors is taken into account, Spain is the country with the greatest presence, since 31% of them, at all levels of collaboration, belong to institutions in this country. This is closely followed by Mexico, with 27% of affiliations and, from this point, we observe a dilution in the concentration of countries, followed by Chile, with 10%; Argentina, with 8%; Colombia, with 6%, and Brazil, with 5%. The remaining 13% is divided among 13 countries, mostly in Latin America.

Comparing with previous studies we can observe a consistent increase in international participation for individual publications or in the first place of authorship, because while ^{Rodríguez and García (2007)} reported 26.6%, and ^{Gómez-Rodríguez et al. (2017)}, 42%, in the last period analyzed there is 63.4% of international authorship in first position. The above shows that a trend towards internationalization is maintained, however, a significant percentage of contributors (36.6%) are still nationals. We also observed an increasing demand to publish in CyS from Asian researchers, and this is due, we believe, to the publication of texts in English.

In terms of the institutions of origin, it is noteworthy that the Universidad de Guadalajara (UdeG) continues to occupy first place as the institution of affiliation of participating authors in the period 20162022. However, unlike the 2004-2016 period, in which other Mexican institutions occupied the first places together with the UdeG, in the last period analyzed the second position is occupied by an institution from Chile, in third and fourth positions are institutions from Spain and, in fifth place, from Argentina. Thus, we can see that national universities have been displaced in the first place by international universities, with a strong presence of Spain (Table 3).

Table 3 Institution of affiliation of authors 

Position	2004-2016		2016-2022
	Institution	Participations	Institution	Participations
1	Universidad de Guadalajara	49	Universidad de Guadalajara	31
2	Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey	13	Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile	13
3	Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana	9	Universidad Rey Juan Carlos	12
4	Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes	6	Universidad Complutense de Madrid	10
	Universidad Complutense de Madrid	6	Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas	9
5	Universidad Veracruzana	5	Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey	8
6	Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente	4	Universidad de Lima	8
	Universidad de Buenos Aires	4	Universidad Carlos III de Madrid	7

Source: The authors.

It should be noted that the participation of the University of Guadalajara is varied, with a total of 25 authors in the 31 collaborations, of which only five have published on more than one occasion and, of these, only in one case there were more than two publications. This shows a high level of participation by researchers from the institution and not an intensive level of publication by few authors.

On the other hand, when analyzing the distribution of institutions by country, we can see that Spain is the country with the highest number of participating institutions in the period reviewed, with a total of 35. It is closely followed by Mexico, with 28 different institutions, next is Argentina (14), Colombia (12) and Chile (11). Thus, it can be seen that the countries with the greatest number of participants are also those with the greatest number of member institutions. In the case of Spain and Mexico, a three to one ratio was found, i.e., for each institution in that country there are three participations in different publications. In the cases of Argentina, Colombia and Portugal, the ratio is two to one, and in the rest, one to one.¹²

In addition, when observing the relationship between the country of origin and the number of articles from each country, we can see that, although Spain is the country with the highest number of authors participating in the period, Mexico is the one with the highest number of papers published (Table 5). This implies that Spanish authors have worked more collaboratively, with an average of two authors per text, while Mexicans mostly publish individually. Chile is the country that reports the highest number of co-authorships, with an average of 2.5 authors per article. It is important to mention, in this sense, that collaborations can be national or international.

Table 4 Relationship between authors and institutions 

2016-2022
Country	Number of institutions	Authors	Relation between authors and institutions	Country	Number of institutions	Authors	Relation between authors and institutions
Spain	35	108	3.1	Ecuador	3	4	1.3
Mexico	28	93	3.3	Italy	4	4	1.0
Chile	11	35	3.2	France	2	3	1.5
Argentina	14	26	1.9	Portugal	2	4	2.0
Colombia	12	21	1.8	Belgium	2	2	1.0
Brazil	7	19	2.7	Bolivia	1	2	2.0
Peru	2	9	4.5	Cuba	1	1	1.0
United States	5	7	1.4	Germany	1	1	1.0
Uruguay	3	5	1.7	Pakistan	1	1	1.0

Source: The authors.

Table 5 Relationship between collaborators and papers 

2016-2022
Country	Authors	Papers	Relation between authors and papers	Country	Authors	Papers	Relation between collaborators and papers
Spain	108	54	2	Ecuador	4	3	1.3
Mexico	93	72	1.3	Italy	4	3	1.3
Chile	35	14	2.5	France	3	3	1
Argentina	26	16	1.6	Portugal	4	3	1.3
Colombia	21	10	2.1	Belgium	2	2	1
Brazil	19	10	1.9	Bolivia	2	1	2
Peru	9	6	1.5	Cuba	1	1	1
United States	7	6	1.2	Germany	1	1	1
Uruguay	5	4	1.3	Pakistan	1	1	1

Source: The authors.

The phenomenon of collaborations has appeared in the last period analyzed, which reflects a tendency to carry out academic work and publish it between two or more authors. This is due, in part, to scientific policies in various countries, such as Spain, where the work of collegiate groups is encouraged.

The above coincides with the findings of ^{Martínez-Nicolás and Carrasco-Campos (2018)}, who found in their analysis that there is a growth in collaborations in published works. They attribute this to the increase and strengthening of multicenter networks of researchers (p. 1372). In CyS we found that, unlike other periods analyzed, in recent years articles signed by researchers from different institutions and countries have been submitted.

Themes

As can be seen in Table 6, 34% of the papers refer to studies from the point of view of broadcasting/production/interactivity. That is, where the elaboration of messages starts from. This is followed by papers that analyze the reception/consumption/circulation of content. Regarding the significance of these, 20% analyze this area and only 8% of studies (essays) analyze the state of research in the field of communication.

It stands out in this analysis that the articles that address digital culture (participatory, transmedia and multiscreen culture) as a central theme, are those that have increased their presence in recent years, since from having no works on the subject in the period 2004-2016, there was a notorious increase in 2016-2022, reaching 17% of the total number of articles published for this period. The sociocultural environment (covering subjects and social identities, urban culture, daily life, education, ideology and beliefs, discourse and symbolic representations) continues to predominate as a typical social thematic reference. There was also a brief increase in studies on the socioeconomic environment of the media (from 17 to 21%) and a drop in the study of the academic field of communication (from 25% to 15%).

Source: The authors.

Figure 3 Typical social theme 

Research traditions

Regarding the research tradition to which the texts are ascribed, in the cut analyzed for 2016-2022, the sociocultural tradition sweeps, with 72% (having an increase from 28 to 72% from one period to another), while the critical tradition has a significant drop from 35 to 15%. This is explained by the increase in digital studies that respond to the current reality and research that seeks to explain the uses and appropriations of digital culture.

On the other hand, it is important to point out that in previous periods the traditions encompassed, particularly, in the critical and socio-psychological schools, were very present, which shows that the questions and general orientations respond to a renewed zeitgeist.

As can be seen in Figure 5, the emphasis on the sociocultural tradition comes from local, national and international collaborations, noting an increase in this tradition in foreign countries. We also observe more critical studies in national research (Mexico).

Source: The authors.

Figure 4 Research traditions 

Source: The authors.

Figure 5 Research traditions by regions (local, national, international) 

Type of methodological designs and methods

We found that qualitative designs continue to predominate -even with an increase from 55 to 63% with respect to 2004-2016 (August), a slight increase in mixed studies (11 to 14%) and a decrease in quantitative studies (34 to 24%)-. There is a preference for qualitative studies among Mexican collaborators (86%) versus international (60%). Compared to the 2004-2016 period, we find a preference for qualitative studies for the 2016-2022 period. As ^{Arroyave (2023)} has suggested, although many novel proposals and unusual methodological approaches circulate naturally in the field, in terms of scientific production, a plethora of factors determine that classical approaches remain at the forefront of global trends and that epistemic innovation is an uncommon scenario.

Regarding the methodologies applied in the research, of the 111 publications where the qualitative perspective was used, documentary analysis predominates with 43%, various methodologies with 17%, discourse analysis with 12%, and interview with 10%, among those that stand out the most (Figure 8). It should be noted that methodologies used for digital culture research appear, such as virtual ethnography, observation, social network analysis and big data, with lower percentages from the qualitative and quantitative. Figures 7 and 8 show the results of the systematization carried out in 2004-2016 and 2016-2022. Content analysis continues to stand out as a method and documentary analysis stands out.

In general, the dimension of methodologies used in the publications, comparing the last two stages, highlights the increase in the use of documentary analysis, a technique that had 4% in the period 20042016, and for the period 2016-2022 presents 30% of its implementation, considering the 186 publications analyzed (Figure 6); while the other techniques maintain close percentages within the two periods. For example, content analysis drops from 15% to 13%, but remains as the main technique used within the quantitative perspective. Meanwhile, discourse analysis varies from 10% to 8% within the articles in general. Given the increase in the use of documentary analysis, this technique is positioned as the main one within the qualitative methodology in the last period analyzed, whereas in the previous period discourse analysis was the most used technique for this perspective (Figures 7 and 8).

Source: The authors.

Figure 6 Methodologies used 

Source: The authors.

This graph omits essays, therefore the total presented does not coincide with the total of the corpus analyzed in that period (N = 209).

Figure 7 Research designs and methodologies (2004-2016) 

Source: The authors.

This graph omits essays, therefore the total presented does not coincide with the corpus analyzed in that period (N = 186).

Figure 8 Research designs and methodologies (2016-2022) 

Discussion

At the end of the study, it was possible to verify some assumptions or, rather, intuitions that had been on the work table of the journal’s editorial team for several months or even years, largely as doubts that drove the decision-making process and the various editorial strategies.

Among them, the fact that a significant part of the production continued to come from Spain but that, at the same time, the sometimes new or renewed presence of South American countries, such as Colombia and Peru, and the constant and long-standing participation of Argentina and Chile was noticeable, in addition to the fact that collaborations between authors and institutions were increasing, partly as a natural result of global policies of funding and promotion of the production of science and technology. There has also been an increased demand to publish in CyS from colleagues from Asian countries, which shows the interest in publishing in Latin American journals, and reaching other audiences, with global issues such as gender violence, among others.

Source: The authors.

Figure 9 Communicative levels (2004-2016) 

Another aspect to highlight is the fact that several requests have been received from colleagues from Spain to coordinate thematic sections; of the 14 published from 2017 to 2022, Spanish academics participated in six. This undoubtedly affects the scientific tradition from which the thematic sections are prioritized, as well as the promotion of collegiate work. This has also had an impact on the high publication of collaborations from that country and the scientific traditions from which they are approached, although a policy in CyS is that the origin of the published texts is balanced. In this line, most of the thematic section coordinators have been Mexican (eight), while colleagues from Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, the United States and Peru have also participated. The balance leans towards Mexico and Spain, so it is necessary to promote the participation of countries from the Global South and other regions of the world.

Source: The authors.

Figure 10 Communicative levels (2016-2022) 

At the same time, it was possible to identify that, although the journal shows a growing openness towards internationalization, it continues to be an important platform for its own institution and, therefore, for the country and the surrounding territory, since the Universidad de Guadalajara is precisely the most published institution in the corpus.

Another finding, which was not surprising but satisfactory, was that CyS, in terms of gender, tended to even out and that, according to what was collected, promises to be maintained in the long term. This fact is important, it is believed, because it speaks of a panorama where the voice of women scientists and academics has a place of authority that certainly a few years ago was not easily found, since they were excluded from the citation field of science in general, and CyS is not a space alien to this. As ^{Arroyave (2023)} mentions, women have been historically excluded from the field of communication, either because of their race or gender, both in terms of the texts where they appear as authors, as well as the number of citations they receive in comparison with men. As shown in the article presented, there is a balance in CyS in terms of authorship by gender, but it would be necessary to make a finer analysis by cross-referencing by race, subject matter, research traditions, etc.

Conclusions

Academic journals, today, face challenges that were unimaginable a decade ago; one of them, of great importance due to its implication in independent publishing, is the massive absorption of university or institutional journals by large international publishing conglomerates.

Given the precarious economic situation of non-commercial journals, dependent on increasingly reduced university budgets (even more so if the institutions are public) and the global pressures involved in digital and scientometric publishing production, many journals end up ceding or licensing their hemerographic products to for-profit consortiums,¹⁵ which entails at least two major problems: on the one hand, the intermediation and privatization of these products and, on the other, the involvement of actors and agendas of interest outside the disciplinary fields and the scientific autonomy of these agendas.

On the other hand, the “metrics race”, quarticizing and indexing (and in this goes the use of journals as bureaucratic tools of expertise to evaluate the academic “quality” of authors and institutions) have brought about an important change in the international hemerographic ecosystem, where the structure of the old offer of editorial proposals has evolved towards a direct and manifest competition between journals to occupy the leading positions.

In this sense, CyS has not been oblivious to the pressures and needs for updating in this area, but has always wanted to maintain its “organic” nature, that is, that the visits, citations and downloads received are maintained based on the natural demand for the papers it offers and the interested search by our audiences, in this case, both for articles and content produced for social networks, like podcasts, infographics and other pieces of communication produced by the joint editorial team.

As for the challenges, this circumstance has acted as an incentive in the updating of the journal at different stages, starting, as briefly mentioned above, with the migration to digital format (definitively leaving the printed paper and mail subscriptions) and assuming the model of continuous publication (rolling pass), that is, where individual articles are published and not by compilation issues, promoting advanced publication and, above all, initiating complex logistical processes of evaluation and cataloging in world-renowned indexes, the most important of which, as a challenge and management, has been the indexing in Scopus.

At this point, it is important to clarify that the entry and permanence in the different quartiles of this index (of which there are four) is the result of the confluence of very different factors, where the entry of more journals to the indexes and the comparison of citation rates and other impact indicators between them make the periodized position of each journal in the quartile map fluctuate.

Thus, there may be the paradoxical case that, although a journal has received more citations in a recent period than in a previous one, due to its relativization in relation to the new journal ecosystem (with a greater number of players in the recent period, for example), the journal changes its position to a lower one. From here, the challenge has been to learn, both from experience and formal training, the complex functioning and structure of current scientometrics and hemerometrics, which, needless to say, changes every year, enriches itself and requires constant and persistent updating by the entire editorial team.

For Comunicación y Sociedad, being indexed in Scopus (quartile 3 at present), implies the effort for the journal to maintain or move up a quartile (previously it has been in quartile 2), and to enter other indexes. However, as mentioned above, CyS is at a disadvantage with other journals produced in countries such as the United States or England, which have other financial and human resources and come, for the most part, from private publishers. This makes double or triple the effort on the part of the editorial team. However, we believe that CyS fulfills its function in the field of communication, regardless of this “metrics race”, where the journal defends its identity, rigor and prestige gained over 35 years.

While it would be naïve and untruthful to deny that a degree of competition has always been involved (a fact that is not only true but also desirable), one reality is that this sort of “race to the bottom” is beginning to have undesirable consequences in certain aspects and for various actors, such as young researchers, alternative agendas and peripheral issues.

If we pay attention to the above, we will see that, for some editorial projects, new authors are bypassed in favor of those consolidated and “blockbuster” and that certain themes and agendas, whether emerging or not, may be risky if they attract or cater only to scarce or non-recurrent audiences and readers; in short, situations that potentially report low citation and constant visits by the same readers are avoided.

In this sense, CyS has had as its own concern and as a practical, axiological and deontological axis to maintain itself as an organic publication, which gives space to both new and laureate authors and to agendas and topics that respond to the current problems of the region.

What we present in this article also shows how the field of communication studies is mobilized from the Global South (adding Spain to this region), and we observe that, although more and more countries from other nations (both from Europe and Asia) publish in the journal, it is still a minimal percentage. Large commercial publishers, mainly from English-speaking countries, are the main interest of academics in the field, due, we believe, to the evaluations made to researchers and the requirements to obtain funding, where publication in journals in quartile 1 is privileged.

However, the efforts made in the journals of the Latin American region are enormous, and we cannot compare the working and financing conditions of Latin American journals with those of first world countries. Although it is important to be and maintain indexing (as it reflects, among other aspects, the quality of a publication), on this side of the Global South the field responds to other conditions, topics and realities.

Returning to what has already been worked on for some time by people such as ^{Ford (2005)} or ^{Ortiz (2009)}, we know that it is not a novelty that mainstream science is generated from the Global North and that the lingua franca in the market of scientific ideas and the main intellectual and academic narratives is English, but it is worthwhile to update the debate and ask ourselves about the changes and factors that are renewing day by day the state of this historical contract because, it should also be clear, the mechanisms of exclusion and the dynamics of marginalization of knowledge are endorsed with different elements at each stage of its evolution.

Although somewhat more intuited than proven to venture a statement, what can be glimpsed is that an important part of the thematic axes and object concerns that we have seen appear and change throughout the last period investigated in the journal is due to the offer of thematic issues, where the central factor is not so much the possibility per se of creating and maintaining this type of undertaking, but, particularly, that these thematic collections are proposed directly, as editorial projects by academic colleagues from around the world, to the editorial board of CyS.

While the editorial team and the committees (editorial and scientific) have a general idea of the main agendas of interest to our readers and, based on analytical work on usage metrics and informal dialogue with the academic community in this and other areas, we can provide very positive feedback on intuitions and refine that “instinctive sense of smell” that guides many editorial decisions, the proposals for monographs and thematic dossiers, which after all result from empirical work in the proponents’ areas of expertise, naturally bring to light the epistemic concerns and omissions, the blind spots, so to speak, of the routinized processes of production and visibilization of a field of knowledge.

Thus, themes or thematic axes that individually or discretely could be seen as “mere curiosities” or reverberations on the periphery of what common sense would dictate as part of the general interest, when they have given rise to systematized proposals based on the tracking of very complete states of the matter and mapping of areas of silence, have allowed us to find and offer invaluable catalogs of problems and thematic treatments that, we know, have been very useful for our reading community since download and citation metrics skyrocket.

With this in mind, all that remains is to say that, although the peripheries and gaps continue to exist as a structural landscape in which we must try to thrive, efforts such as those we have reviewed are intended to be the anticipation of a more horizontal and miscellaneous future.

Likewise, and as part of the limited circumstances of science production that have been discussed, the limited focus of this work, although barely initial and necessarily synthetic, at least allows, we believe, to propose future lines of research that include more complex analysis. It would also be very interesting to analyze other publications in the field in the Ibero-American region and even other regions, and contrast with what is produced and published in the journal Comunicación y Sociedad. Without a doubt it is pending and necessary work.