I am writing to bring you up to date on ICOMM section activities, to get your feedback on our new ICOMM Journal Listing Project and to invite you to become involved in Section projects.

2008 ISA PROGRAM IN SAN FRANCISCO

Program Chair Laura Roselle and Program Chair-Elect Derrick Cogburn have crafted a superb series of panels for the San Francisco program including a large number of co-sponsored panels and special panels. You will be hearing from Laura and Derrick after the holidays with more detail. But we promise some IC section program innovations, good surprises and opportunities, taking advantage of the San Francisco location….

We have just received news as well that the ISA Workshop Committee has selected a workshop submitted by the International Communication section on FRAMING A RESEARCH FRONTIER: CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE POLICY IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE as one of its ISA 2008 Venture Research Workshops. There will be openings for IC section members to attend; the information regarding the workshop is posted on the ISA website at  www.isanet.org/workshop. Please let me know if you would like to participate or register to attend through the ISA website.

Finally, we will be presenting awards for the BEST PAPER and BEST GRADUATE STUDENT PAPER at our Section Business meeting. Ken Rogerson and his committee are hard at work on identifying the nominees; recently Ken emailed you requesting nominations. There is still time; please send your nominees to  rogerson@duke.edu.

JOURNALS IN THE FIELD OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION

The section began last spring a pioneering project to identify and consider ranking journals in our field. Many of you have already contributed the names of your favorite journals from around the world. Thank you for your additions to the list! I am attaching below our list as of December 1. Please email me at  nlevins@american.edu by January 15, 2008 with any additional journals and please place 'IC journal list' in the subject line. Our goal is then to have the updated listing from which to provide you the opportunity to rank the journals through an anonymous, web-based process. But before that we also need your help to weigh in on how we go about the rankings. I have, with the help of my Faculty Assistant, Hank Smith, examined how some other journal ranking systems in the social sciences work, including those used in Europe.

We will be using our new website at  www.igloo.org in order to have a vibrant on-line forum, beginning January 15, 2008, for discussing the approach we take to ranking the journals. Just by way of introduction, some efforts focus on having faculty rank the reputation or the quality of a journal. European approaches to ranking use Categories A (10-25% of the entire list should be placed here; international publications with a strong reputation and regularly cited by researchers all over the world); Category B (international publications with a good reputation among researchers in different countries); and Category C (research journals with an important local/regional significance in Europe, cited primarily by scholars in Europe). I will be posting on our website beginning January 15th, all we have discovered so that each of you can provide your feedback on how to proceed for our field of international communication.

ACTION ITEMS

Please email me at nlevins@american.edu to add/delete any journal names to the attached list and place IC JOURNAL LIST in the subject line.

Please save the FOLLOWING DATES AND TIMES FOR ISA 2008 and please come and contribute to the vibrant discussions at our Panels throughout the Program:

Our BUSINESS MEETING in San Francisco on Friday, March 28,2008 from 6-7pm in Continental 2 at the Hilton. .

Our Workshop in San Francisco on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 from 9am-5pm in the Hilton.

Our special 2008 off-campus event on Saturday afternoon, March 29, 2008 followed by Dinner. .

I wish you a wonderful end of semester and hope you'll email me at  nlevins@american.edu with any ideas for the Section

Best,
Nanette