Producción Científica

E-learning has been continuously present in current educational discourse, thanks to technological advances, learning methodologies and public or organizational policies, among other factors. However, despite its boom and dominance in various subject areas, this thematic does not yet exist in the world system of publications. Therefore, works in this thematic end up being published under related categories, particularly in education or computer science, thus fragmenting and make invisible the existing knowledge. This work is based on the hypothesis that the scientific communication of e-learning has a sufficient degree of cohesion to be considered as a thematic category in itself. From a bibliometric approach, its scientific production was analyzed, obtaining the bibliographic data of SCOPUS and SCImago Journal & Country Rank, selecting its main descriptors and generating visualizations through VOSViewer with the mapping overlay technique, to represent its set and proximity. As a result, it was determined that a set of 219 publications show a high bibliometric interrelation among its articles and these are presented mainly in the social sciences and transversally between computer science and health professions. This set serves as a channel of scientific communication and structure of knowledge on the thematic and can therefore be considered as the basis for establishing the “e-learning” thematic category in the world system of scientific publications, contributing to the consolidation of the discipline, to its access and development by researchers.

Introduction: In the process of scientific communication, obsolescence is defined as the decrease of information validity or usefulness over time. Objective: To determine the degree of obsolescence of information published in three public health journals in Mexico and quantify their annual utility loss in a given period. Method: Multisynchronous bibliometric study of indexed, peer-reviewed and active journals, with more than 30 years of existence. Analyzed variables: source articles’ year of publication, references’ year, age of the latter. From the references of original articles published between 2008 and 2013, variables and indicators were obtained according to Brooks’ mathematical model and the half-life method. Results: Obsolescence measurements and variables’ mean values were obtained for each journal. The values obtained indicate a half-life of 7.5 years; actuality average, 39.76%; aging factor, 91.15%; loss of usefulness, 8.85% per year, which represents obsolescence of literature on this subject and country. Conclusions: This study delineates an obsolescence profile for each journal: the aging factor and annual loss of usefulness are consistent with those shown by the leading public health journals in Latin America and Spain.

The objective of this article is to analyze the distinctive characteristics of research production in the field of communication in Latin American scientific communication journals. Meta-research is necessary because it allows re-evaluating the field and offers new horizons in knowledge production. Two studies were conducted: 1) Bibliometric analysis of 116 journals in eight databases and 24 publications in the Web of Science and Scopus; 2) Content analysis including that of 407 articles over a period of 10 years (2009-2018). The findings demonstrate a research trend in the Latin American region toward international standards, evidenced by a preponderance of empirical over essay studies. Universities in the region published most of the journals in the field and circulation was predominantly biannual. Contrary to expectations, the most widely disseminated topic was health communication, partly owing to a large sample of Brazilian journals. Within the empirical research, the qualitative approach was predominant. The interview was the most widely used research method in the region. Finally, the most used theories were agenda setting and framing. Imminent challenges arise, i.e., to strengthen indigenous theoretical production and to position the region’s themes and reflection more decisively in knowledge production at a global level.

In this article, we analyze the scientific production on public television disclosed between 2001 and 2019 in the Web of Science databases, characterizing the metadata information, and identifying media studies, traditions of communication theories and methodologies with content analyses. 202 articles were found that correspond to 1% of total publications with the keyword “television”, this show the gap in public television studies. The results demonstrate a centralization of knowledge in Spain and United States. Regions as Latin America, Asia and Oceania have a low participation. Finally, scholars have been interested in the production processes analyzed from the sociocultural tradition.

The difference between transmedia and crossmedia is frequently found to be confusing in the studies regarding communication. The purpose of this research work is to review the use of both concepts in the scientific literature published in Web of Science and SciELo Citation Index. The research starting point is a sample of 895 articles to which a bibliometric analysis and a network analysis are applied to discover the existing relationships among the texts. The results of the study are useful for knowing the configuration of the knowledge field from a perspective that integrates the diverse disciplines involved, and they open the spectrum to understand the transmedia and crossmedia communication as related objects of study that must be studied in an interdisciplinary manner.

Little is known about contemporary research on communication in Latin America and, in particular, in Peru. Existing studies show the impact that current research policies have had in academia, the heterogeneity of topics covered, the distance between training and research, the development of research groups, and the type of topics of interest. In order to start an analysis of the scientific production of communication research in Peru, this study offers a descriptive bibliometric approach to the research of students and teachers of the University of Lima’s Faculty of Communication, one of the oldest in the country. The results show the impact of regulatory frameworks on the development of research, the importance of research groups in developing indexed publications and the type of topics that have been addressed.