Current Issue Summary
June 2022 (Vol. 62, Issue 2)
A Scientometric Study of the Journal of Advertising Research: Prominent Contributors and Research Themes from 1996 to 2019
In December 2020, the Journal of Advertising Research published an independent, seminal, bibliographic study that identified key publishing trends since the academic journal’s inception in 1960. And now, in this June edition, an even more granular overview expands on those findings to reveal the prominence of practitioner authors amid a wide range of themes. Naveen Donthu (Georgia State University) Weng Marc Lim (Swinburne University of Technology), Satish Kumar (Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur) and Debidutta Pattnaik (Woxsen University) encourage those who wish to contribute their work to the JAR to read this article when considering future submissions. “Prospective authors can target and locate their contributions in the extant discussion of advertising research in the journal using the insights in this article,” they write.
Using a scientometric-based analysis, the global research team sought greater visibility into the productivity of JAR academic-versus-practitioner authors, major research themes and overall productivity compared with similar peer journals between 1996 and 2019. They conducted descriptive and co-word analyses to assess the productivity of different contributors and to identify research themes by applying natural language processing (NLP).
This process involved using a topic identification algorithm, known as VOSViewer, on article titles and abstracts. The method allows for the creation of semantic clusters based on between-groups dissimilarity and within-group similarity. These clusters are then brought to life with colorful scientometric maps featured in a special online supplement.
Among the takeaways:
- Even though JAR is primarily an academic journal, it features practitioner authors prominently, more so than its peers.
- Collaborations of academic and practitioner authors are also notable.
- Beyond effectiveness measurement, JAR research themes are intertwined with branding, communication, information technology, marketing, neuroscience, psychology and strategy, among others—a deep body of knowledge accessible to multiple disciplines.