Science Communication

Two niche journals serve as the dominant homes for today's science communication scholarship. One of them—and the topic of this entry—is the journal Science Communication. The second is Public Understanding of Science. Both are published by SAGE Publications, although Science Communication originated in the United States, while Public Understanding of Science originated in the United Kingdom.

Although ostensibly launched in 1994, Science Communication actually evolved from an earlier journal called Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization, which had debuted in 1979. That evolution was catalyzed and guided by Science Communication's first editor, Marcel C. LaFollette. Knowledge had been born with an ambitious agenda: to apply social science scholarship to communication, policy, and politics. A group called the Knowledge Utilization Society had given the new journal a small subscriber ...