Beyond views, productivity, and citations: measuring geopolitical differences of scientific impact in communication research

Scientometric analyses applying critical sociological frameworks have previously shown that high-prestige research output-with regards to both quantity and impact-is typically clustered in a few core countries and world regions, indicating uneven power relations and systematic biases within global academia. Although citation count is a common formula in these analyses, only a handful of studies investigated altmetrics (impact measures beyond citation-based metrics) in communication science. In this paper, we explore geopolitical biases of impact amongst the most productive scholars in the field of communication from 11 countries and 3 world regions. Drawing on SCOPUS data, we test three formulas that measure scholarly performance (citations per document; views per document; and citations per view) to investigate how geographical location affects the impact of scholars. Our results indicate a strong US-dominance with regard to citation-based impact, emphasizing a further need for de-Westernization within the field. Moreover, the analysis of altmetric formulas revealed that research published by Eastern European and Spanish scholars, although accessed similarly or even more often than American or Western European publications, is less cited than those. Country-level comparisons are also discussed.

Automated summary

Previous scientometric analyses have shown that high-prestige research output tends to be concentrated in a few core countries and regions, indicating imbalances in power relations and biases within global academia. This paper investigates the geopolitical biases of impact among productive scholars in communication from 11 countries and 3 regions. The results indicate a strong US dominance in citation-based impact and reveal discrepancies in altmetric indicators between Eastern European and Spanish scholars and their American and Western European counterparts.