The Surprising Value of Regional Journals in International Media and Communication Research and Publishing

Abstract

What are the current issues facing academic journals, especially those with regional and national identities and bases? This paper reflects on how the opportunities, issues, and challenges for regional journals to make consequential, quality, and widely received contributions to media and communication research and debates. Offering an Australian perspective, this paper discusses the tensions and imperatives of regionally located journals, subtended by situated research cultures, histories, and institutions, as they seek to engage with and publish for an increasingly distributed, networked, and stratified international field of media and communications. If managed successfully, such regional locations offer resources and models for a genuinely cosmopolitan, widely and fairly available academic publishing ecology.