State policy on rewards of communication researchers: short critical analysis

Abstract

The Mertonian sociology of science already proved that rewards received by researchers for their investigations have an influence in their scientific outputs and practices, which shows how important the policies relating to this topic are. On the basis of a secondary analysis of the Spanish university system’s official data, we describe how scientific output in the field of communication has evolved during the last 25 years. CNEAI resolutions on evaluation criteria, which represent the Spanish reward policies in the communication research field over the last 25 years, are then analysed. Results show a research field characterized by an increasing number of investigators, more specific research projects based on their interests, and a diversification of scientific output formats. Taking all this into account, throughout this period the reward policies have become more and more restrictive, they have taken the bibliometric index of the impact factor as the main criterion for the validation of the scientific output and they have established the academic journals as the main vehicle of their dissemination.

KEYWORDS: sociology of science, communication research, scientific output, research evaluation, bibliometric indexes, critical analysis.