Earlier this year, the Cogitatio publishing company’s open-access, online scholarly journal, Media and Communication, published a nine-article issue, “Reproducibility and Replicability in Communication Research.” That special issue was not unique.
Communication Studies, journal of the Central States Communication Association, published a special issue on research replication in 2018, Communication Methods and Measures published a related special issue on “questionable research and publication practices in communication science” in 2015, and Journal of Communication published a related Open Science special issue in 2021. In fact, Human Communication Research published the article, “Replication in experimental communication research: An Analysis,” by C.W. Kelly, L.J. Chase and R.K. Tucker all the way back in 1979.
But last year, Regent University professor Stephen Perry—inspired by that 2018 issue of Communication Studies—took it all one step further by launching a new journal entirely devoted to replication of communication research. Posted on the platform Calameo, the first issue, dated 2023, includes an introductory essay by Perry and four articles, “A Reexamination of College Student Concealment and Disclosure of Mental Health Concerns,” by Nicole Gamboni and Scott Whippo; “The Nightmare of Multiculturalism Re-examined: Interpreting and Deploying Anti-Immigration Rhetoric in US Social Media,” by Anthony U. Utulo and LaVonda Jones; “Crisis Communication of Leadership during the 2021 Fire Season in Washington State,” by Scott Whippo and Rebeka Keator; and “The Secret to BTS’s Standing Ovation on the Global Stage of Digital Culture: ARMY Productions,” by Suha Mohammed. Notably, although Perry’s career been centered in media and mass communication (including six years as editor of the journal Mass Communication and Society), all four articles sit squarely in communication studies.
The second issue in 2023 was entirely devoted to social media: “This Just In: The Evolving Role of TikTok in Mainstream News Media,” by Stefanie Hicks East and Kimberlyn Mitchell; “A Modified Study of Quitting Social Media: The Benefits and Drawbacks,” by Marissa J. Hamilton; “Wakanda Forever—A Superhero and His Kingdom Continue to Disrupt Hollywood Tropes of Gender and Race: A Replication Study,” by Ann Broda and Sean Allen; and “Faith of Facebook: A Replication Study Exploring the Effects of Church Communication on a Social Media Platform,” by Melissa Rodriguez and Joel Ramsey.
Perry writes in the first issue’s introduction that despite his social scientific training emphasizing that science and social science are important to society and therefore their findings should be tested by replication, and that articles’ methods sections must be written to facilitate replication, he quickly found early in his career that few journals want to publish pure replications. For his own new journal, Perry said both reproductions/replications and validations (similar studies using new data) are highly valued and will be published. The issues’ articles, he writes, all came out of Regent University graduate courses in which doctoral students were assigned to validate and replicate studies published in the field’s “influential journals” during the previous 18 months.
Perry concludes his introduction by making a four-part argument for the importance of replication and validation for anyone who still needs convincing. First, the more times a theory is tested and fails to be falsified, the more confidence everyone can have in it. Second, replication decreases concerns arising from convenience samples; Perry quotes McEwan’s 2018 article in Communication Studies that said, “Convenience sampling is an acceptable choice if findings are replicated across varied samples” and adds for emphasis, “Without replication, then, convenience sampling becomes questionable at best.” Third, replication helps establish generalizability of theories and findings. Fourth, replication can detect and help correct errors in past research.
After the 2018 Communication Studies issue gave Perry the idea for a new journal, he first approached the Mass Communication & Society Division of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication about starting it. Perry had been editor of its journal, Mass Communication & Society, for six years (2008-2013) and knew that its highly lucrative contract with Sage Publications meant the Division had hundreds of thousands of dollars in its budget’s publication line item—and a shortage of ways to productively spend much of it. But the Division was not interested.
Perry then had the idea of requiring students in the “applied methods” course for doctoral students at Regent University, a course Perry said is more like “advanced methods,” to choose recently published articles to dissect and replicate. He published those first two issues in 2023, with one 2024 issue published by year’s end and two planned for 2025.
The posted publication fee for authors is $15 per page, but Perry said that so far, he hasn’t charged anyone more than $99. Posting the journal on Calameo is free until a periodical has published 50 issues. Still, the journal has other expenses and slightly losing money (which Perry covers as a “labor of love.”) Each article is covered by a Creative Commons copyright, and authors choose which level of Creative Commons agreement they want. Authors are also allowed and encouraged to release their articles before publication by preprint.
Perry has tried to solicit manuscripts at the Broadcast Education Association (BEA) convention, will be doing more marketing, and hopes this article in NCA’s Spectra will bring in submissions. He is especially looking for replications of new, “groundbreaking” research.
Overall, Perry said replicating studies is an untapped opportunity for scholars, especially graduate students and newer faculty. And he hopes the journal will contribute to efforts to increase the rigor of communication scholarship, which he believes is not immune to the problem of flawed studies discovered during replications in fields such as economics and psychology.
Perry can be contacted at sperry@regent.edu.