Communication research has been one of the fastest-growing disciplines across the social sciences over the last two decades in terms of the numbers of Social Science Citation Indexed journals and articles. However, whether Communication is an independent discipline remains debated. Of various criticisms, one extreme considers Communication too dependent on other disciplines, whereas the other regards Communication as too inward-looking. In the current study, we measure and analyze citations of articles not only among communication scholars but also between communication scholars and their counterparts from other disciplines to evaluate the performance of communication research. Our findings suggest that communication research has maintained balanced citation patterns, with a 20% self-citation rate, a 1:1 ratio between incoming and outgoing citations, and a high diversity of in- and out-citations across social science disciplines. The results may serve as useful food for thought for future evaluation of communication discipline.

中文翻译：

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沟通是一门独立的学科还是复杂的学科？2010-2020年传播学出版物被引分析

从社会科学引文索引期刊和文章的数量来看，传播研究是过去二十年社会科学中增长最快的学科之一。然而，传播学是否是一门独立的学科仍然存在争议。在各种批评中，一种极端认为传播学过于依赖其他学科，而另一种则认为传播学过于内向。在当前的研究中，我们不仅测量和分析传播学者之间的文章引用，还测量和分析传播学者与其他学科同行之间的文章引用，以评估传播研究的表现。我们的研究结果表明，传播学研究保持了平衡的引用模式，自引率为 20%，传入和传出引用之间的比例为 1:1，社会科学学科的内引和外引的高度多样性。研究结果可以为未来传播学科的评估提供有用的思考。