Communication and the Public
Communication and the Public is an international peer-reviewed Open Access journal that publishes both theoretical and empirical research articles in the intersections of communication and the public broadly defined. It welcomes research in these areas from and about any parts of the world, especially the parts of the world where the experiences have been under-considered in the extant social and cultural theories or in communication studies. It publishes quality works in both social scientific and humanistic traditions.
The regular features of the journal include research articles, theoretical essays, forum and symposium, and book reviews. To better reflect the multi-disciplinary thematic focus, the journal will publish frequent special issues. Proposals for special issues from any social scientific or humanistic disciplines are welcome.
Communication and the Public aims to build a community of scholars who seek to carry out dialogues and intellectual fusion across disciplinary, national, and cultural boundaries. The thematic focus of the journal is the mutually constituting dynamics between communication and the public. The journal will highlight the ongoing theoretical contentions concerning various uses of “public” (as in, for example, public communication, public life, public discourse, public opinion, public interests, and the public sphere) and “the public,” as in contrast to other forms of social collectivity (e.g., crowd and the mass). It welcomes considerations of such issues in the intersections of the online and offline worlds. It aims to galvanize concerted intellectual efforts toward understanding the formation of publics, public interests, public representation, public contestation, public arts, and public spaces.
This peer reviewed journal is interested in publishing articles on a wide range of topics, including but not limited to: the formation of publics and public spheres; new technologies and digital publics; historical trajectories and cultural variations of civil society, citizenship, social capital, and network society; the changing meanings of public and private; the relationship between publics and other social categories such as class, gender, race, and nation; media and social movements; and communication ethics in the formation of publics and public opinion.
| Yi-Hui Christine Huang | City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China |
| Yu Hong | Zhejiang University, China |
| Zhao Alexandre Huang | Université Paris Nanterre, France |
| Fen Lin | City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China |
| Jian Lin | Chinese University of Hong Kong, China |
| Lu Wei | Communication University of Zhejiang, Zhejiang University, China |
| Qian Wang | Zhejiang University, China |
| Sandra Braman | Texas A&M University, USA |
| Craig Calhoun | Arizona State University, USA |
| Joseph M. Chan | The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China |
| Terry Flew | University of Sydney, Australia |
| Zhongdang Pan | University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA |
| Zizi Papacharissi | University of Illinois Chicago, USA |
| John D. Peters | Yale University, USA |
| Dhavan Shah | University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA |
| Guobin Yang | University of Pennsylvania |
| Barbie Zelizer | University of Pennsylvania, USA |
| Yuezhi Zhao | Tsinghua University, China |
| Robert Asen | University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA |
| Saugata Bhaduri | Jawaharlal Nehru University, India |
| Ségur Céline | Université de Lorraine, France |
| Ching-Ching Chang | Academia Sinica, Taiwan, China |
| Jaeho Cho | University of California, Davis, USA |
| Michael Curtin | University of California, USA |
| Benjamin Detenber | Nanyang Technological University, Singapore |
| John Gastil | Pennsylvania State University, USA |
| Jonathan Gray | University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA |
| Laura Grindstaff | University of California at Davis, USA |
| Shaohua Guo | Carleton College, USA |
| Steve Guo | Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong SAR, China |
| André Jansson | Karlstad University, Sweden |
| Min Jiang | University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA |
| Sora Kim | The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong |
| Tetsuro Kobayashi | Waseda University, Japan |
| Marwan Kraidy | Northwestern University, USA |
| Francis L. F. Lee | The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong |
| Hongtao Li | Fudan University, China |
| Limin Liang | Communication University of Zhejiang, University of Zhejiang, China |
| Jun Liu | University of Copenhagen, Denmark |
| Lilach Nir | The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel |
| Enrique Peruzzotti | Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Argentina |
| Thomas Poell | University of Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Daniel Raichvarg | University of Burgundy, French Society of Information and Communication Sciences, France |
| Hernando Rojas | University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA |
| Leslie Regan Shade | University of Toronto, Canada |
| Cuihua Shen | University of California, Davis, USA |
| Fei Shen | City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China |
| Lijiang Shen | Pennsylvania State University, USA |
| Marko Skoric | City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong |
| Cara Wallis | Texas A&M University, USA |
| Lars Willnat | Syracuse University, USA |
| Jing Wu | Peking University, China |
| Michael Xenos | University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA |
| Haiqing Yu | RMIT University, Australia |
| Elaine Jingyan Yuan | University of Illinois-Chicago, USA |
| Baohua Zhou | Fudan University, China |
| Yuqiong Zhou | Shenzhen University, China |
Manuscript Submission Guidelines: Communication and the Public
- Open Access
- Article processing charge (APC)
- What do we publish?
3.1 Aims & Scope
3.2 Article types
3.3 Writing your paper - Editorial policies
4.1 Peer review policy
4.2 Authorship
4.3 Acknowledgements
4.4 Funding
4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests - Publishing policies
5.1 Publication ethics
5.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement - Preparing your manuscript
6.1 Formatting
6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
6.3 Supplemental material
6.4 Reference style
6.5 English language editing services
6.6 Identifiable Information - Submitting your manuscript
7.1 How to submit your manuscript
7.2 Title, keywords and abstracts
7.3 ORCID
7.4 Information required for completing your submission
7.5 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
8.1 SAGE Production
8.2 Online First publication
8.3 Promoting your article - Further information
- Appealing the publication decision
Communication and the Public is an Open Access, peer-reviewed journal. Each article accepted by peer review is made freely available online immediately upon publication, is published under a Creative Commons license and will be hosted online in perpetuity. Publication costs of the journal are covered by the Center for Public Communication Research at Zhejiang University in the People’s Republic of China. There is no charge for submitting a paper to the journal.
For general information on open access at Sage please visit the Open Access page or view our Open Access FAQs.
2. Article processing charge (APC)
Currently there is no APC for this journal. Publication costs of the journal are covered by the Center for Public Communication Research at Zhejiang University in the People’s Republic of China.
Before submitting your manuscript to Communication and the Public, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.
Communication and the Public is an international peer-reviewed journal published by the Center for Public Communication Research at Zhejiang University in the People’s Republic of China. It publishes both theoretical essays and empirical research articles in social scientific and humanistic disciplines that problematize the concepts of “public” and “the public” as they are associated with various communication phenomena and take place in any society around the globe, especially in countries under-represented in the field of communication studies.
Please visit our Sage Author Gateway for guidance on producing visual and/or video abstracts.
Visit the Sage Author Gateway for general advice on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance your article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
3.3.1 Making your article discoverable
For information and guidance on how to make your article more discoverable, visit our Gateway page on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
Sage does not permit the use of author-suggested (recommended) reviewers at any stage of the submission process, be that through the web-based submission system or other communication. Reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Our policy is that reviewers should not be assigned to a paper if:
- The reviewer is based at the same institution as any of the co-authors.
- The reviewer is based at the funding body of the paper.
- The author has recommended the reviewer.
- The reviewer has provided a personal (e.g., Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) email account and an institutional email account cannot be found after performing a basic Google search (name, department and institution).
Communication and the Public adheres to a rigorous double-anonymize reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are always concealed from both parties. Each manuscript is reviewed by at least two referees. All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible.
All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, while maintaining rigor. Reviewers make comments to the author and recommendations to the Editor, who then makes the final decision.
The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor / Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.
All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that substantially derives from the student’s dissertation or thesis.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.
Per ICMJE recommendations, it is best practice to obtain consent from non-author contributors who you are acknowledging in your paper.
4.3.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:
- Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
- Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
- Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g., conflicting interests, funding, etc.
Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.
4.4 Declaration of conflicting interests
Communication and the Public encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’.
For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations.
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway.
5.1.1 Plagiarism
Communication and the Public and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
5.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published, it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
5.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
Before publication Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Communication and the Public publishes manuscripts under Creative Commons licenses. The standard license for the journal is Creative Commons by Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC), which allows others to re-use the work without permission as long as the work is properly referenced, and the use is non-commercial. For more information, you are advised to visit Sage's OA licenses page. Alternative license arrangements are available, for example, to meet particular funder mandates, made at the author’s request.
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.
Figures supplied in color will appear in color online.
This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g., datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc.) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.
Communication and the Public adheres to the APA reference style. View the APA guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
Authors should update any references to preprints when a peer reviewed version is made available, to cite the published research. Citations to preprints are otherwise discouraged.
6.5 English language editing services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
Where a journal uses double-anonymized peer review, authors are required to submit:
- A version of the manuscript which has had any information that compromises the anonymity of the author(s) removed or anonymized. This version will be sent to the peer reviewers.
- A separate title page which includes any removed or anonymized material. This will not be sent to the peer reviewers.
Visit the Sage Author Gateway for detailed guidance on making an anonymous submission.
7.1 How to submit your manuscript
Communication and the Public is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit the journal submission site to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
7.2 Title, keywords and abstracts
Please supply a title, short title, an abstract and keywords to accompany your article. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article online through online search engines such as Google. Please refer to the information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords by visiting the Sage Journal Author Gateway for guidelines on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.
The collection of ORCID IDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID iD, you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID iD will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID ID please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
7.4 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed on the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage, please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Please ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
8. On acceptance and publication
If your paper is accepted for publication after peer review, you will first be asked to complete the contributor’s publishing agreement. Once your manuscript files have been checked for Sage Production, the corresponding author will be asked to pay the article processing charge (APC) via a payment link. Once the APC has been processed, your article will be prepared for publication and can appear online within an average of 30 days. Please note that no production work will occur on your paper until the APC has been received.
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit, or by email to the corresponding author and should be returned promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
One of the many benefits of publishing your research in an open access journal is the speed to publication. With no page count constraints, your article will be published online in a fully citable form with a DOI number as soon as it has completed the production process. At this time, it will be completely free to view and download for all.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Communication and the Public editorial office (communication-public@zju.edu.cn) as follows:
Editorial Office
Communication and the Public
College of Media and International Culture
Zhejiang University (Xixi Campus)
No.148 Tianmushan Rd. Hangzhou
310028，P. R. China
10. Appealing the publication decision
Editors have very broad discretion in determining whether an article is an appropriate fit for their journal. Many manuscripts are declined with a very general statement of the rejection decision. These decisions are not eligible for formal appeal unless the author believes the decision to reject the manuscript was based on an error in the review of the article, in which case the author may appeal the decision by providing the Editor with a detailed written description of the error they believe occurred.
If an author believes the decision regarding their manuscript was affected by a publication ethics breach, the author may contact the publisher with a detailed written description of their concern, and information supporting the concern, at publication_ethics@sagepub.com