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The field of Communication in Spain is analyzed, contextualizing Spanish output at a global and local level between the years 2000 and 2020. Based on a descriptive bibliometric analysis of the Communication category of the Social Sciences Citation Index database, part of Web of Science, the impact of the main countries is identified. The weight of the output in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) database between 2015 and 2020 is also studied. An analysis of the output by universities in Spain for the period 2010–2020 is also carried out, comparing it with the impact and the works in the first quartile. The results reveal that Spain has been the fourth country in terms of output in Communication in the last decade and that Austria stands out as the country whose works have the greatest impact. It is also observed that 67% of Spain’s works in Communication are published in journals that are indexed in ESCI. The impact of Spanish universities is very close to the world average. The Universitat Pompeu Fabra stands out, publishing the most articles and, furthermore, being the Spanish university with most papers in the first quartile of the JCR in Communication between 2010 and 2020. The study of the Shanghai Ranking by area includes eight Spanish universities, only three of which have output in Communication that comes mainly from professors in this area. The role of the Spanish journals Comunicar and Profesional de la información is notable, as they publish a large fraction of the output by Spanish universities in the Communication field. Finally, this paper presents the challenges of research in Communication, as well as those related to its bibliometric analysis, and a reflection on the problems that affect scientific production and research in this subject area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyzed the results obtained for the total count between 2007 and 2018 of (1) doctoral theses defended in the 55 universities with undergraduate and/or graduate studies in communication that offer doctoral degrees, (2) competitive projects in state calls in the social sciences and humanities areas where the object of study includes a socially significant dimension of "communication" practices, and (3) papers resulting from R&D projects published in reference journals in the area of communication. These documents are the most representative of the research activity of faculty, because they constitute the published results originating from research that is recognized and legitimized by academic life, without which such documents could not have been published. Thus, the articles collected here constitute a census of publications based on previous research, since all those articles whose object of study was not previous research were not selected, e.g., essays, or epistemological reviews of authors, schools, and/or theoretical or methodological trends. Papers presented at Asociación Española de Investigación de la Comunicación (AE-IC) congresses, which are also being studied as part of the MapCom project, could also have been included; however, they are only considered tangentially herein because only a minority of them are expressly linked to research results. This overview of the productivity of communication research in Spain over a decade analyzes documents grouped by universities, Autonomous Communities, author gender, and years. A total of 4,158 documents have been analyzed. The results reflect the influence of the scientific policies of the research quality assessment agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The journal Sustainability, published by MDPI, was the journal that published the most papers by researchers from Spanish institutions in 2020. This justifies a detailed examination of the Spanish scientific production in this journal. At the same time, the work of editing monographic issues in which papers with Spanish authors have been published is analyzed. For this purpose, we have identified whether each paper belongs to regular or to special issues of the journal, identifying whether the author of the paper is also editor of the monograph, or a university colleague. The nationality of the editors was also studied. The subject matter of the articles and their belonging to the area of the journal were analyzed. Most of the papers published by Spanish authors were published in special issues (81.6%), mainly edited by authors of the same nationality (63.1%). It is also found that there is an important production carried out by the same editor of the monograph, or by colleagues from the same institution. It is also found that a substantial number of works published in Sustainability (42.3%) have minimal or no relationship with the subject of sustainability. Finally, the implications of these findings are discussed under the light of the publication strategies of Spanish researchers and the science evaluation policies applied in Spain. The main controversial aspects identified have to do with the publication of papers on other subjects, the value of publishing in monographs, which in some cases could be considered as inbreeding, and the short editing times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the social structure of Spanish and Latin American communication researchers through the representation and analysis of three coauthorship networks at the national, institutional, and individual level. Such networks are built from papers indexed in the 'Communication' category by Web of Science and published between 2000 and 2019 by authors attached to a Spanish or Latin American institution (n = 5,040). The goal is to characterize the structural features of each network, identify the most central actors, and illustrate the most relevant relationships among nodes. The results show that the most central country is Spain, followed by the USA and other European nations. Among the Latin American states, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico are placed at the most relevant nodes. Latin American collaboration is preferentially addressed to the USA, especially since 2015. Regarding institutions, Spanish public universities in Madrid and Catalonia achieve the highest degrees of centrality. However, the most central Latin American institutions are private universities. The most relevant authors are Spanish researchers until 2015, when they are replaced at the top by Latin American scholars. Collaboration at both the individual and institutional levels shows a deep regional tendency, while the internationalization of researchers and universities is only more visible since 2015. This work identifies a tendency towards internal cohesion at different network levels as the number of connected nodes grows in each period. We conclude that a proper Spanish-Latin America community of communication researchers does not exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the use of Twitter by the candidates for the presidency of the Government of Spain of the five main parties at the national level -PSOE, PP, Vox, Podemos and Ciudadanos- of the general elections campaigns held in April and November 2019. The main purpose of our study is to determine the strategies used of the microblogging network by the leaders, both in terms of activity, interaction and notoriety and in terms of topics and discursive development, as well as their similarities and differences. The secondary objective is to study the evolution of these strategies both between the two campaigns and with respect to previous elections. To this end, the research is based on a content analysis methodology that studies quantitative, qualitative and discursive elements. The results reveal an uneven use of Twitter in terms of the frequency of updates, but similar in terms of its unidirectionality, with scarce interaction with other users and a predominance of tweets with their own content over retweets. The dissemination of other people's content was used almost entirely to promote the candidate's political party and, to a lesser extent, to interact with journalists. Dialogue with citizens was almost always residual, both in retweets and in responses. This utilitarian conception of the microblogging network was accompanied by a polarizing thematic selection, with an almost general preponderance of political issues over policy issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological transformations and, especially, the accelerated process of digitalization have changed the profiles and production routines of the media. At the same time, universities have had to adapt their journalism curricula to new training needs. This paper analyzes the evolution of the technical-digital training of the journalism degree in Spain over the last two decades through a comparative study of three stages: before, during, and after the adaptation to the EHEA (2000-2010-2020). The research brings together, as valuable reference material, the curricular offerings of 112 programs and 242 subjects that show the educational evolution of the digital environment over the last 20 years, with a longitudinal and epistemological approach. The trends identified by this diagnostic work confirm, among other aspects, how the design of journalism curricula has evolved at a slow and asynchronous pace in digital training until the last decade and with disparate speeds between universities. Added to this is the conformation of a highly varied epistemological heritage that, beyond the specific names of the subjects, denotes a progressive commitment to digital and multimedia teaching, combining generic hybrid knowledge with more specialized training in terms of languages and formats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication studies in Spain have now become consolidated based on their evolution over the last 50 years. The aim of this paper is to provide an in-depth analysis of the current state of Spanish higher education in Communication. To this end, an analysis is carried out of the structure and composition of the undergraduate and postgraduate degrees (master and PhD studies) in Communication at public and private universities in Spain, paying special attention to the centers that host these studies, the people who contribute to their operation, and their offerings and distribution. Using a descriptive methodology and the content analysis technique, an analysis form is applied to the universities composing the system of Communication studies in Spain, based on their offerings and the information available and accessible on their institutional websites. The results reveal the difficulty of accessing such data and the lack of common criteria (or compliance) for presenting such information on official websites. The results reveal a greater offering at the national level but a wide dispersion of the higher education offering in terms of type, location, type of university, and territorial distribution. We also highlight the gender gap in terms of faculty leadership as well as among teaching staff. We emphasize the phenomenon of double or combined degrees, especially at private universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to public information (that generated by public institutions) is a right recognized by both European (Unión Europea, 2001) and Spanish legislation (España, 1992; 1997; 2013). The bodies of the Spanish State must to make available to the citizens, free of charge and in a transparent way, all the documents that they generate, unless there are national security reasons. Many national, regional and local governments have created information systems or public information platforms in the form of newsletters or gazettes. The purpose of this paper is to find out how is, on a documentary level, the main informative gazette of Spain, the Boletín oficial del Estado (BOE). The metadata of the published documents are studied and the metadata used for documentary description are analyzed in a deeper way. The results reflect the absence of documentary descriptors in more than 89% of the total documentary BOE' corpus. In recent years this figure has barely exceeded 50%. The paper ends with a few recommendations for improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public administrations publish open data for later reuse by citizens. Besides the obvious impact on transparency, they have an important economic potential which explains the increasing adoption of this type of initiatives. There is an increasing number of administrations that decide to create open data portals, a tendency that municipalities have followed. Few empirical papers have assessed this type of portals and the analyses have been mainly qualitative or limited to a reduced number of portals, so there are no generally accepted criteria for the assessment of their implementation. The main contribution of this paper is the definition of a method to analyse open data portals and its application to a sample of municipalities of Spain, a country at the forefront of data re-utilization in Europe. Furthermore, the economic- financial information available in these portals is analysed, as it is essential to accountability, fight corruption and evaluate the financial sustainability and effectiveness of public service delivery. Results show that there is much room for improvement in this field. Only 40% of the cities analysed have an open data portal, and the average score of the sample analysed does not reach 50%. Most portals seem to work as mere data repositories, neglecting those aspects that promote data use by the non-expert public, accountability, citizen engagement and the quality of the data being disclosed (e.g., definition of the metadata used). So, the paper concludes with some recommendations for improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the current panorama of science evaluation, the limitations of citation indexes to study the social sciences and humanities have been the subject of wide debate. To resolve this situation, different products have been created for use in national contexts, since they cover certain aspects not contained in more international indices. An example is the In-RECS family, where an indicator such as the impact factor of Eugene Garfield is defined, but its contribution lies in the ability to evaluate research in Spain by obtaining citation indicators. This paper thus highlights the need to create new products for research evaluation in general, but particularly in the social sciences and humanities. The context in which different alternatives arise and are developed to evaluate existing journals is presented, along with Dialnet Metrics, a citation index developed by the Dialnet Foundation in collaboration with the EC3 Group and dozens of Spanish universities. Based on an analysis of the citations of source journals from different subject areas, Dialnet Metrics provides indicators to evaluate the research impact at different levels. This bibliometric product enables contextualized analysis at the micro (researchers), meso (journals), and macro (areas and universities) levels. Finally, the content, data volumes, and structure of this citation index are described quantitatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High technology has been one of the main assets used by the media around the world to stand out from the masses and reach an increasingly fragmented audience, including drone journalism, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. In this regard, the mid-2010s saw a whole phase of experimentation that began with so-called immersive journalism, a new way of producing news content using virtual reality and 360° video, which introduced various novelties in the way stories are both told and consumed/watched. Among these, 360° real-image videos are the most common form, which can be partly explained by factors such as time and cost, although it is also possible to find completely computer-generated (CG) nonfiction experiences. Legacy media such as The New York Times, El País, or the BBC have been experimenting with the possibilities of this immersive storytelling, but what about digital native media? The aim of this paper is to explore the use of 360° video by Spanish digital native media in order to observe the degree of development of immersive storytelling, as well as the quality of the pieces available more than 5 years after the start of this phenomenon known as immersive journalism. For this purpose, a content analysis of 360° videos published during the period 2015-2019 by El español, eldiario.es, El independiente, and El HuffPost has been carried out. The study of these particular cases reveals the absence of a narrative strategy aligned with the immersive format; in general, these are simple videos that provide little added value compared with the conventional format. Furthermore, the results show that the history of immersive journalism by these cybermedia has been limited in terms of both volume and time, with little guarantee that it will continue into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines databases of female experts as tools to promote gender parity in the sources consulted and cited by journalists. To do this, we conducted a search of databases available online (n = 88) and carried out in-depth interviews with people in charge of these databases (n = 4) as well as a survey among female scientific researchers included in the database of the Association of Women Researchers and Technologists of Spain (AMIT) (n = 919). The main results reflect the great potential of these tools but indicate that, to be effective, they require fluid communication with the media and a design that allows their incorporation into the regular routines of journalists. In Spain, their impact is still low and, as in the rest of the world, there is great fragmentation of resources accompanied by very weak interaction among the different initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the information coverage by the Spanish newspapers El país, El mundo, ABC, and La vanguardia in Twitter on the electoral campaign prior to the 10 November 2019 general elections. A content analysis of all tweets published by these media regarding the elections (n = 1,462) between Friday 1 and Saturday 9 November reveals that, although there are differences in the production patterns and features of the messages, the subject received notable attention in all the newspapers. The coverage gravitated around two main themes: the 4N electoral debate, and campaign events. The results reveal that, although most of the tweets had a neutral tone, messages with clear positioning corresponding to the editorial line of the newspaper were also published, albeit to a lesser extent. During the electoral period, the media agenda revolved around this issue, accounting for around one-fifth of all pieces published on Twitter. Newspapers do not take advantage of the dialogic nature or possibilities offered by this social network to create a community among their readers, limiting themselves to the dissemination of content from their digital edition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two studies, one qualitative and the other quantitative, have been carried out, each using two samples differentiated by the degree of knowledge of the performance of media: informed population and communication professionals. A quantitative analysis of the reputation of the Spanish media is carried out, based on a qualitative analysis of the professional and business reality of the media with the best reputation. It is concluded that there is a broad consensus that there is no confidence in the media because the information that they disseminate is manipulated. The credibility of a medium shows a high correlation with its history, consistent with the theory of reputation, because consolidation of a stable reputation requires time. The reputation of each type of media (paper press, digital press, radio, and television) is evaluated, yielding two rankings of the 16 media with the best reputation in Spain, corresponding to the two samples analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doctoral dissertations enable the transfer of research skills and capacities to future generations and the consolidation of lines of research in a given area of knowledge. The field of Library and Information Science in public universities in Spain is characterized by the supervision of doctoral theses by academics in the area. We identified active professors during the 2019-2020 academic year, their date of appointment as civil servants within the public university system, the dissertations that they supervised, and their participation in papers published in scientific journals. The analysis included 644 theses. About a quarter (23%) of university faculty have never supervised a doctoral thesis, and most faculty members and tenured professors (60%) show a lower than average rate of adviserships per year since their academic appointment. There is a high concentration of PhD advisers in just a few institutions and academics (8% of university professors have supervised 42% of the dissertations), with an important gender imbalance: women supervised an average of 1.8 dissertations, compared with 2.6 for men. Information units and services, study metrics and scientific publications, and information sources are the topics of 47% of the dissertations. Many of the professors with 10 or more adviserships (n/N = 12/18) lack a subject area specialization, and their role in PhD supervision was not related to their participation in research activities oriented toward publishing in scientific journals. Our results suggest that considering supervision of doctoral theses as an important academic merit could contribute to a further concentration of power and social capital among a small group of advisers. This phenomenon could reduce the plurality of topics addressed and favor suboptimal adviserships. The imbalances described emerge as another threat, exacerbating the epistemological crisis in the discipline and in the university studies in this area of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific research in the communication field has experienced great growth in recent years. Recent technological changes, as well as the emergence of Web 2.0 and 3.0 and new forms of communication, such as social networks, have led to new and varied studies in the discipline. This paper analyzes the scientific production of the 27 countries with the greatest scientific production in the communication field in the period from 2003 to 2018. The results indicate that: the most productive countries are the USA, UK, and Spain; there is less international collaboration than in other disciplines, but there is a network of European collaboration that is quite dense and has great impact, and another network in Pacific countries (Asia + Oceania), albeit with lower density and impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish university libraries have had to adapt their services to the virtual environment after the classroom-based teaching lockdown in March 2020 due to Covid-19. Given the possibility of a greater virtual dimension of learning and teaching during the next academic year, these library services should be improved. This paper analyzes how university libraries are strengthening their support for online learning and are progressively being integrated into the virtual campus, as well as the actions that are necessary to enhance these services and the main difficulties perceived by their librarians. For this purpose, a sample of professionals from university libraries was interviewed, and the research literature on this subject was also reviewed to identify the main international experiences that can be considered as benchmarks for improving virtual library services. Both the research literature and the librarians interviewed agree on two aspects: the need to increase collaboration with other university departments and the wide scope for improvement in the integration of the library into online learning, which is currently limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To know the perceived and real difficulties of the company in Spain in relation to the implementation of R+D+i by the Spanish business, we start from the vision that employees have about the ease or difficulty of their companies at the time of doing research and development and therefore, innovation. In this paper we analyze the highlights of the survey prepared under the auspices of the "Scientific Culture Research Project: perception and attitudes towards science and innovation in the Spanish business sector" funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. The results obtained advance that education and the promotion of an innovative attitude are the basis for achieving a successful business development since innovation is one of the key pillars of the maintenance and survival of companies today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific social networks are a new meeting place for researchers and a major instrument for the promotion of knowledge. Their use is increasing in the scientific community, as they are practical tools to disseminate research results and to share knowledge. This paper examines the presence of 77 Spanish universities in the two main scientific social networks (ResearchGate and Academia.edu). The results show that, despite the continuous development that those networks are having worldwide, the number of Spanish members in them is considered insufficient and in some universities is almost anecdotal. These results should be the starting point for an action program of the universities to increase the membership of their academic staff in those networks, as part of their mission of disseminating knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main features of 207 Spanish health sciences journals active in 2014, and their visibility in six biomedical and multidisciplinary databases are described. Of these databases, Scopus and Ibecs provide the best coverage of these journals, and Medline and WoS the worst. The discipline best represented is medicine, followed by psychology, nursing and pharmacy. Among the observed characteristics, there were an absence of journals published exclusively on paper and the presence of journals published in English or bilingual Spanish-English and with open access. The article includes the journal list, which can be a reference tool for researchers selecting target journals for publication, for publishers in the health sciences areas and for information scientists for use in their database management tasks or in advising other professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish research in Documentation (or Library and Information Science, LIS) began to stand out in the 1980s, in parallel with the creation of university studies in Library and Information Science, and it increased its activity significantly until the year 2000. In this period, research in Documentation was oriented to disseminate rather than innovate, and also had a low international impact, shortage of economic and human resources, and poor methodological quality. In the first 20 years of the 21st century, we have witnessed an outstanding growth and diversification of this research activity, which has led to the overcoming of most of the problems mentioned before. The objective of the text is to present a general overview of the development of Documentation research in Spain in the last 20 years based on the analysis of five fundamental aspects: publications (articles and monographs), topics and methodologies, scientific journals, research projects and doctoral theses. General descriptive data from public statistical sources and comments from a bibliographic review are provided for each of them. As a conclusion, a very positive global balance of Spanish research in Documentation in the last 20 years stands out, not only a quantitative increase (in publications, theses, research projects, etc.) but also a qualitative improvement in the use of research methods and techniques, as well as a diversification of the research topics. In any case, internationalization (collaboration with foreign authors) and the presentation of international projects could be improved. Finally, there is a risk in near future related to aging and the absence of generational renewal of the research staff that can will slow down this growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse which production values are more determinant regarding the audience's quality perception with respect to different types of entertainment television genres. In order to develop this study, we have taken into account production values such as the creative and technical quality, the host, the set and the content. The main source of data for this empirical study is an original survey. The target population consisted of the Spanish population and the sample was designed to be representative. The results show that in spite of the emergence of the connected TV -resulting from the convergence of television and the internet-, which is profoundly changing the audiovisual market, the cornerstone of their business remains the same: content quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing number of open data initiatives that allow citizens to reuse public data sets through specifically designed applications. This paper presents an overview of these initiatives and their development in Spain, analyzing the open data sets available and the functions and features of the applications developed for this purpose. The information source used in this work is the portal http://datos.gob.es, of national scope which organizes and manages the public information catalog of Spanish administrations. This source offers information about these data sets and the applications and utilities developed. The analysis shows a diverse distribution of these open data sets that requires grouping by metacategories for its study and analysis. The level of development of the applications seems low but it may be due to the incipience on freely available data. In any case, the data sets related to infrastructures (especially transports) appear to be the main object of the applications developed so far in Spain in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide a content analysis of the research published on advertising creativity in Spanish communication journals of the first and second quartile of the In-Recs index (2011 edition): Anàlisi (from 1980 to 2012), Comunicar (from 1993 to 2012), Comunicación y sociedad (from 1988 to 2012), Doxa (from 2003 to 2012), Questiones publicitarias (from 1993 to 2012), Revista latina de comunicación social(from 1998 to 2012), Trípodos (from 1996 to 2012), and Zer (from 1996 to 2012). The authors analysed 3406 papers to determine the level of interest in advertising creativity evidenced in these scientific journals. Only 0.20% of the studies analyzed focused on advertising creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]