La política estatal de recompenses als investigadors en comunicació: una anàlisi crítica

The Mertonian sociology of science already proved that rewards received by
researchers for their investigations have an influence in their scientific outputs and
practices, which shows how important the policies relating to this topic are. On the
basis of a secondary analysis of the Spanish university system's official data, we describe
how scientific output in the field of communication has evolved during the last
25 years. CNEAI resolutions on evaluation criteria, which represent the Spanish reward
policies in the communication research field over the last 25 years, are then analysed.
Results show a research field characterized by an increasing number of investigators,
more specific research projects based on their interests, and a diversification
of scientific output formats. Taking all this into account, throughout this period
the reward policies have become more and more restrictive, they have taken the
bibliometric index of the impact factor as the main criterion for the validation of the scientific output and they have established the academic journals as the main
vehicle of their dissemination.