Is community psychology "too insular"? A network analysis of journal citations

The current study uses social network analysis to explore one aspect of cross-disciplinary connections in community psychology-citations from articles published in community psychology's main journals (i.e., American Journal of Community Psychology and Journal of Community Psychology) to allied disciplines in 2009. Results indicate that although community psychology journals cited a wide range of disciplines, their levels of citation to any individual journal in another discipline never exceeded 10% of their total network citations. Additionally, journals in other disciplines did not exhibit many citations to community psychology journals. Observed homophily measures indicate that community psychology journals have more cross-disciplinary citations than articles published in the flagship journals of clinical psychology, sociology, and public health. However, relative homophily measures suggest that community psychology journals are also far more likely to cite within discipline than expected by chance. Implications and future directions for cross-disciplinary endeavors in community psychology are suggested.