Corporate Communications An International Journal

About Corporate Communications An International Journal

Corporate Communications: An International Journal — Full Profile

Corporate Communications: An International Journal (CCIJ) is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by Emerald Publishing in the United Kingdom. It carries the print ISSN 1356-3289 and the online ISSN 1758-6046, and it is catalogued on Journals World under the record that this profile expands. The journal addresses a simple but consequential idea: an organisation's communications are not a decorative layer added after decisions are made. They are part of the organisation itself. How a company, a public body or a non-profit speaks to employees, investors, journalists, regulators, customers and communities shapes trust, legitimacy and performance, and CCIJ exists to study that relationship with academic rigour and practical relevance.

The journal is therefore read in two directions at once. For scholars, it is a venue for theory-building research on organisational communication, public relations and reputation. For practitioners, it is a source of evidence about what communication work actually does — how internal communication affects productivity, how crisis responses protect or damage credibility, how investor relations influence confidence, and how digital channels are changing every one of those relationships. This profile sets out the journal's identity, scope in detail, editorial and peer-review model, submission requirements as published by Emerald, indexing position, readership, and the questions authors most often ask before submitting. Where a fact could not be verified from an official source, this profile says so plainly rather than filling the gap with an estimate.

Quick Facts

What the Journal Is About

Emerald's own description of CCIJ starts from the observation that responsibility for communication is increasingly seen as part of every employee's role, not simply the function of a marketing or public relations department. That framing matters. A journal that treated corporate communication as a specialist technical craft — press releases, campaign planning, media buying — would have a narrow and shrinking subject. CCIJ instead treats communication as an organisational phenomenon: something that happens in boardrooms, on shop floors, in annual reports, on social media, in change programmes and in moments of crisis, and something that can be studied at each of those levels.

The journal's stated purpose is to illustrate why communications are important and how best to implement a strategic communications plan. Its content deliberately mixes forms: research articles, viewpoints and news-style contributions sit alongside empirical studies, reflecting both pure and applied research in corporate public relations, public affairs and corporate communications. Authors should note that mixture when judging fit. A purely descriptive practice piece with no conceptual contribution is unlikely to survive review, but a rigorous study that speaks to a recognisable organisational problem is exactly the journal's home ground.

Three commitments run through the journal's recent editorial direction. First, communication is treated as relational and behavioural work, not only as message transmission: publics are active sense-makers, not passive recipients. Second, listening and engagement are foregrounded alongside speaking — how organisations hear stakeholders is as much a research object as how they address them. Third, internal communication, workplace culture, leadership, inclusion, gender equality and employee wellbeing are treated as communicative phenomena in their own right, integral to organisational legitimacy rather than peripheral human-resources topics. The editor's five-year editorial reflection published in volume 31 (2026) describes this orientation explicitly, including a deliberate move away from purely instrumental, transmission-based models of communication.

Scope in Detail

Corporate communication and profitability

One of the journal's founding topic areas is how a company's communications can affect profitability. Research in this strand examines the links between communication quality and outcomes that boards care about: customer retention, brand equity, cost of capital, employee productivity and resilience during downturns. Studies may be quantitative, qualitative or mixed, but they are expected to make the communication mechanism visible rather than simply report a correlation between spending and results.

Employee and internal communication

How effective employee communications can influence productivity and performance is a second named strand. Work here covers change communication, leadership communication, internal channels and platforms, employee voice and silence, engagement, remote and hybrid working, and the communicative side of organisational culture. The journal's recent special-issue calls — including one on the future of internal communication, its voices, technologies and sense of belonging at work — show this strand is active and expanding.

Media relations and public affairs

Press and media relations remain a core topic, now extended to digital and social media environments in which organisations no longer control the timing or framing of coverage. Public affairs — the growth and accessibility of information on central and local government affairs, lobbying, regulation and policy engagement — is likewise an explicitly listed area, giving the journal a public-sector and institutional dimension that purely marketing-oriented titles lack.

Investor relations and financial communication

The value of investor relations and financial public relations is a named topic. Research in this area addresses earnings communication, annual and integrated reporting, disclosure practices, analyst and shareholder engagement, and the communication of environmental, social and governance performance. As sustainability reporting becomes more regulated and more contested, this strand overlaps increasingly with work on corporate social responsibility reporting — one of the subject strengths recorded for this journal in the Journals World catalogue.

Identity, reputation and crisis

Corporate identity, image and reputation form a natural cluster in CCIJ. Contributions examine how identities are constructed in discourse and design, how reputations are measured and damaged, and how organisations respond when things go wrong. Crisis communication research — preparedness, response strategies, apology and denial, and post-crisis learning — is a long-standing part of this cluster and connects directly to the journal's public relations base.

Digital, data and technology

Recent calls for papers show where the field is moving. A special issue on measuring what matters — quantitative, computational, big-data and analytics-based approaches in corporate communications — invites work that brings stronger measurement to a field often criticised for soft metrics. Work on artificial intelligence in communication practice, on platform dynamics, and on misinformation affecting organisations also fits the journal's direction, provided the organisational communication question stays central.

People, diversity and the profession

A further special-issue call on women in mass communication industries signals the journal's interest in who does communication work: careers, leadership pipelines, pay and representation, and the professionalisation of the field. Research on communication education, professional ethics and the changing skill base of practitioners sits comfortably in this strand.

Editorial Leadership and History

CCIJ has been published by Emerald since the 1990s; its volume numbering reached volume 31 in 2026, which places its foundation in the mid-1990s, and it is one of the longest-running journals dedicated specifically to corporate communication as an academic subject. In its early years the journal helped define the field's boundaries, publishing foundational work that distinguished corporate communication from marketing communication and from public relations practice alone.

The current editorial era is associated with editor Martina Topić, who records in her volume 31 editorial that she became an editor of the journal in December 2020 and that the 2026 editorial marks five years of her editorship. Under that editorship the journal has foregrounded communication as organisational work — flexibility, technology and moral evaluation are the themes named in the volume 31, issue 1 editorial — and has encouraged scholarship connecting theory with lived organisational experience. Authors preparing a submission should read recent editorials and special-issue calls, because they are the clearest public statement of what the journal currently wants more of. The full editorial team and editorial office contacts are listed on Emerald's journal page; a named individual's current role should always be confirmed there before addressing correspondence, since editorial teams change between volumes.

Wim J. L. Elving of the University of Amsterdam is among the scholars historically associated with the journal's editorship, and the journal's advisory community has drawn on the Corporate Communication International network of academics and senior practitioners. That combination — university-based editors and a practitioner-aware advisory culture — explains the journal's persistent dual audience.

Peer Review and Publishing Model

Emerald states the journal's review model plainly: double anonymous peer review, with all submissions sent to at least two independent and anonymous reviewers. Author and reviewer identities are concealed from each other, so manuscripts must be prepared accordingly, with identifying material handled as the submission system directs.

CCIJ is a hybrid journal. It is fundamentally a subscription journal, but authors may choose to publish an article open access by indicating this on the editorial system at submission. Choosing the gold route normally requires an article processing charge after acceptance, and the article is then published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 licence. Alternatively, the green route allows authors to self-archive the accepted manuscript at no cost, in line with Emerald's open research policy. Authors with funder mandates should check which route satisfies their funder before submitting, and should confirm the current charge on Emerald's APC price list, because charges change and this profile does not quote a figure that could go stale.

Emerald is a signatory of the Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines, and its journals encourage citing underlying data, code and methods with persistent identifiers. The publisher also follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. Its author guidance is explicit that manuscripts must be original, must not be under consideration elsewhere, must declare conflicts of interest, and must include appropriate ethical statements and evidence of informed consent where research involves human participants. On artificial intelligence, Emerald's position is that large language models cannot be credited with authorship, that authors remain accountable for accuracy and integrity, and that copywriting a submission with generative AI is not permitted, while copy-editing an author's own existing work is permitted within the stated principles.

Submission Requirements in Practice

Emerald's author guidelines for this journal specify the mechanics authors most often get wrong, so they are worth summarising carefully:

• Article types and lengths. Original articles run up to 8,000 words on the journal's submission page; editorials up to 1,500 words. Emerald's general guidance frames the count as inclusive — structured abstract, references, tables, figures and appendices all count, with an allowance of words for each figure or table (the journal page and general guidance state the allowance slightly differently, so authors should follow the figure given in the live submission system).
• Format. Article files should be supplied in Microsoft Word format; a PDF may accompany the Word file but cannot replace it. LaTeX is accepted only with an accompanying PDF.
• Structured abstract. Every submission needs a structured abstract of at most 250 words, using the headings Purpose; Design, methodology or approach; Findings; and Originality — with Research limitations or implications, Practical implications and Social implications added where applicable.
• Keywords. Up to six short keywords, chosen from the recommended list in the submission system or added by the author.
• References. Harvard style throughout.
• Language. Manuscripts only in UK or US English.
• Author details. All contributing authors are added through the ScholarOne submission system with institutional email addresses preferred; biographies and acknowledgements go in a separate Word document; funding sources must be described in the acknowledgements, including the funder's role.
• Permissions. Third-party material must be cleared in writing before submission; Emerald cannot publish an article with permissions still pending.

Beyond mechanics, fit is the main desk-level question. A strong CCIJ submission names its communication phenomenon clearly, locates it in the corporate communication or public relations literature rather than only in general management theory, uses a method appropriate to its claims, and draws out implications that a thoughtful practitioner could act on. Special issues are a significant route into the journal: recent calls cover quantitative and computational measurement in corporate communications, women in mass communication industries, and the future of internal communication. Responding to a live call, with the call's guest editors and deadlines confirmed on Emerald's calls-for-papers pages, is often the fastest way to guarantee topical fit.

Indexing, Metrics and How to Read Them

CCIJ is a Scopus-indexed journal within the business, management and accounting area, in the organisational communication and strategy neighbourhood, and it appears in the SCImago journal rankings derived from Scopus data. Quartile positions and rank indicators move year by year as citation windows change, and secondary summaries of this journal's standing differ between the year they describe — a published bibliometric review of corporate communication journals, for example, placed CCIJ in the second quartile with a substantial h-index in the data it used, while other snapshots describe different years differently. The responsible way to use these numbers is to consult the current SCImago and Scopus source pages at the moment of decision and to record the year of any figure quoted. This profile therefore does not freeze a single quartile or h-index as a permanent fact about the journal.

What can be said stably is structural. The journal has a long citation history stretching back to the 1990s, a defined place in the corporate communication field's core journal set, and a readership that spans universities and practice. For an author choosing between venues, CCIJ's value is less a single metric than the match between a well-defined specialist audience and a manuscript about organisational communication: papers here are read by the people who teach and practise the subject, which is not true of a generalist management outlet with a higher headline score.

Who Reads It, and What It Is Best For

The readership combines academics in communication, public relations, organisational studies and management; doctoral students building a literature base in corporate communication; and senior practitioners who follow research in reputation, internal communication and public affairs. The journal is best suited to work that is empirical or conceptually original, organisational in focus, and explicit about its communication mechanism. It is a weaker fit for purely promotional case descriptions, for marketing studies in which communication is only a channel variable, and for work whose contribution is to a different field's conversation entirely.

For readers rather than authors, CCIJ functions as a field-defining archive. A literature search on corporate identity, crisis response, internal communication or investor relations that skips this journal will have a visible hole in it, and its special issues are a reliable map of where the field's attention is moving — currently toward measurement and analytics, technology and artificial intelligence, inclusion and the experience of work, and the moral evaluation of organisational communication.

Relationship to Neighbouring Journals

CCIJ sits in a recognisable neighbourhood. The Journal of Communication Management, also published by Emerald, is its closest sibling, with a stronger management-practice accent. Public Relations Review covers overlapping ground from a public relations base. Corporate Reputation Review focuses more narrowly on reputation. Management Communication Quarterly approaches organisational communication from a communication-studies tradition in the United States. Authors often submit across this set over a career; the distinguishing question for CCIJ is whether the manuscript's centre of gravity is the corporation or organisation as a communicating actor, considered whole — internal and external, strategic and everyday — rather than a single campaign, channel or function.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the ISSN of Corporate Communications: An International Journal?
Print ISSN 1356-3289; online ISSN 1758-6046, as listed by Emerald.

Who publishes CCIJ?
Emerald Publishing, based in the United Kingdom. The Journals World record lists the publisher as Emerald Publishing Limited (GB).

Is CCIJ peer-reviewed?
Yes. Emerald states that submissions undergo double anonymous peer review by at least two independent reviewers.

Is CCIJ open access?
It is a hybrid journal: subscription-based, with an optional gold open access route on payment of an article processing charge, and a green self-archiving route for the accepted manuscript at no cost.

How long should a manuscript be?
Original articles are up to 8,000 words including all text, tables and figures, per the journal's Emerald page; the structured abstract is capped at 250 words.

What reference style does CCIJ use?
Harvard style.

Does CCIJ publish special issues?
Yes. Recent calls include quantitative and computational measurement in corporate communications, women in mass communication industries, and future directions in internal communication. Deadlines and guest editors are published on Emerald's calls-for-papers pages and should be checked there, as calls close.

What acceptance or turnaround figures apply?
Emerald does not publish a standing acceptance rate for this journal in the material reviewed for this profile, and no figure is quoted here; authors should judge fit from scope, recent contents and editorials rather than from unverified third-party estimates.

Verification Notes

This profile is based on Emerald's official journal and author-guideline pages for CCIJ, the editor's editorial published in volume 31, Emerald's calls-for-papers listings, and the Journals World catalogue record for the journal. Facts that change often — editorial team membership, article processing charges, special-issue deadlines and yearly metric values — are described in terms of where to verify them rather than stated as fixed numbers, because quoting them without a date would mislead. Readers who need a current metric should take it from Scopus or SCImago with its year attached; readers who need a current charge or deadline should take it from Emerald's live pages.