of communication researchers in Ibero-
America have not presented any research project with
peers from other institutions that are different to their
own and more than half of these (51.25%) have not
been a part of a virtual academic community. These
findings demonstrate the possibility of more geographically
distributed groups in future –and more intensive–
collaborations occurring, which will result in the presentation
of joint projects as well as the organization of
specialized events. When academics were asked
about their experiences in virtual research communities,
classifying their satisfaction with these experiences
on a scale between 1 and 10, the majority of respondents
demonstrated high levels of satisfaction, scoring
them with 7 (16.20%), 8 (33.1%) y 9 (18.31%). Re -
sear chers stated that in these communities, the protocols
or rules of collaboration had generally been established
during the process (64.79%) by those involved
and in very few cases these guidelines had been verbally
discussed (11.27%) or written (13.38%).