Network closure, brokerage, and structural influence of journals: a longitudinal study of journal citation network in Internet research (2000–2010)

The study aims to assess journals’ structural influence in Internet research and uncover the impacts of network structures on journals’ structural influence drawing on theories of network closure and structural holes. The data of the study are the citation exchanges among 1,210 journals in Communication and other seven social scientific fields (i.e., Business, Economics/Finance, Education, Information Science, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology) in Internet research. The top two most influential journals in Internet research are American Economic Review and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Journals in “Communication” field emerge to be an important source of influence in Internet research, whose mean structural influence ranks third among the eight fields, below “Business” and “Economics/Finance”, but above other five fields. Journals’ structural influences are found to grow over time and the growth rates vary across journals. Network brokerage is found to exert a significant impact on journals’ structural influence, while the impact of network closure on journals’ structural influences is not significant. The impact of network brokerage on journals’ structural influence will increase over time.