Recent years have seen increasing interest in assessing the prestige and productivity of programs in communication. An NCA doctoral reputational study was published in 2004, and a new National Research Council assessment is underway that will for the first time include the communication field. Two systems relying on objective appraisal of faculty productivity have been launched since 2005, one by the Academic Analytics Corporation and the other by the Communication Institute for Online Scholarship (the ComVista database). This study details similarities and differences among the four systems' methodologies raising questions about features of these studies' strategies for sampling and measurement. ComVista ranks, based on objective assessment of publication productivity, were highly correlated with the subjectively based NCA reputational ranks. The common practice of restricting assessment of publication productivity to a small span of years reduced this correspondence. Recommendations are provided for improving future assessments. (Contains 1 table and 7 notes.)