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Meet the AAG Journals Editors – Stephen Hanna

April 30, 2018

Dr. Stephen Hanna recently joined the AAG Journals’ editorial team as the Cartography Editor for the AAG suite of journals: the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, the Professional Geographer, and GeoHumanities.

Hanna is a full professor of geography and former chair of the Department of Geography at University of Mary Washington. His cartographic editorial experience is extensive, for example, Hanna has served as the cartography editor for two edited volumes on tourism, Mapping Tourism and Social Memory and Heritage Tourism Methodologies, as well as produced dozens of maps for personal publications in both academic and public outlets. As cartography editor, Hanna “enjoys engaging with a wide variety of graphics including some innovative ways of visualizing both qualitative and quantitative information.”

Hanna’s research is focused on critical cartography and heritage tourism, and his expertise is well documented in numerous cartographic projects. Some of his most recent NSF-funded team research involved investigating how slavery is (or is not) addressed in the landscapes, narratives, and performance that constitute southern plantation museums as heritage places.

In addition to ensuring that the maps and figures printed in the AAG suite of journals meet high quality cartographic standards, Hanna envisions his role as editor to include continued mentorship of students, a key component of his current work at an undergraduate focused institution.

Hanna offers the following advice for prospective publishers in geography: “As cartography editor, I’m focused on the maps people create to accompany their articles. Please don’t settle for the default map design options found in most GIS software packages. Take a little time to consider how best to encourage your readers to spend some time examining your maps. After all, you are including them to clearly communicate your findings or to support your argument.”

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AAG Announces New Journal Editors, Thanks Leaving Editors

December 4, 2017

The AAG welcomes two new editors to take the positions of Cartography Editor for the AAG Journals (Annals, The Professional Geographer, and GeoHumanities) and the Methods, Models, and GIS Editor for the Annals of the AAG starting January 1, 2018. Stephen Hanna will be taking over for Cartography Editor Thomas Hodler while Ling Bian will assume the role of the Methods, Models and GIS Editor as Mei-Po Kwan steps down. The AAG would like to send a very special thank you to Thomas Hodler and Mei-Po Kwan for their years of extraordinary service in these positions.

The new Cartography Editor for the AAG suite of journals, Stephen Hanna, is a professor of geography at University of Mary Washington. Hanna’s research is focused on critical cartography and heritage tourism, and his expertise is well documented in numerous cartographic projects. He has produced dozens of maps for his own published work in outlets ranging from academic articles and books to newspapers such as The Washington Post as well as creating more than 50 maps for scholars in other disciplines. He has served as the cartography editor for multiple edited volumes and mentors students in cartographic design principles to prepare them for a successful career.

Ling Bian, professor of geography at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, will assume editorial responsibilities for Methods, Models and GIS at the Annals of the AAG. Bian currently serves on the editorial board of the Annals and has previously served on the editorial board of The Professional Geographer and as Associate Editor of ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Bringing decades of publication experience in topics related to GIScience, remote sensing, and geographic image retrieval, Bian’s recent research focuses on individual-based and spatially explicit behavior modeling in human health applications.

The AAG would like to express its appreciation for the work of Thomas Hodler as the past Cartography Editor for the AAG Journals. Hodler, an emeritus professor at the University of Georgia, has contributed his cartographic expertise to the AAG journals for over a decade. Maps serve as the visual counterpoint to geographic research, and Hodler has provided valuable insight and guidance to ensure that the cartography published in AAG journals is of high caliber.

A sincere thank you and farewell to Mei-Po Kwan as she leaves her post as the Methods, Models and GIS Editor for the Annals. A professor of geography at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Kwan has served as the Methods, Models and GIS editor since January of 2006. Under Mei-Po’s guidance, the number of submissions to and citations from the Methods, Models and GIS section have increased substantially. Mei-Po Kwan’s dedication, intellect and hard work as an editor has been praised by Annals authors and is greatly appreciated by the AAG.

AAG journals, editors

Journals

Newly Renamed ‘Annals’ Section “Physical Geography and Environmental Sciences”

January 25, 2017

The Annals of the American Association of Geographers has a newly renamed “Physical Geography and Environmental Sciences” section. It’s our hope that this section of the journal will identify with physical geographers, in addition to being open in a multidisciplinary sense to the Environmental Sciences. By explicitly stating “Physical Geography” in the section name, we’d like to encourage more physical geographers to submit their best work to the Annals. The AAG was founded in part by physical geographers, so the new section name is also a way of recognizing and honoring the long tradition of physical geography within the broader scope of our wide-ranging modern field of Geography.

Annals, Annals of the AAG

Journals

‘Annals of the AAG’ Welcomes New Editor

January 6, 2017

David R. Butler. Credit: Texas State University.

Our flagship journal, the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, begins the new year with a change of editorship for the newly named Physical Geography and Environmental Sciences section.

Mark A. Fonstad has completed two terms as editor of the Environmental Sciences section and is succeeded by David R. Butler, who assumes editorship of the Physical Geography and Environmental Sciences section.

David Butler is a Texas State University System Regents’ Professor in the Department of Geography at Texas State University. His accomplishments and experience spanning the discipline of geography are impressive, with research interests centering around geomorphology, biogeography, natural hazards, mountain environments and environmental change.

David has considerable editorial experience, including: serving as Section Editor for Geomorphology for the forthcoming AAG International Encyclopedia of Geography, as a section editor for the international journal Progress in Physical Geography, and as long-time book review editor for the journal Geomorphology. He has also guest edited/co-edited nine special issues of the journals Physical Geography, and Geomorphology. David is looking forward to leading the Physical Geography and Environmental Sciences section of the Annals: “It’s a tremendous honor to be selected to be editor of this section of the Annals, and I hope my many friends in physical geography will help out by submitting their best work for possible publication in the journal. Please put me to work!”

The AAG, the Publications Committee, and the rest of the Annals editorial team would like to express their heartfelt thanks to Mark Fonstad for his hard work over the last seven years. He has presided over a busy section, managing a heavy workload of manuscripts while ensuring that high quality and rigor were maintained.

The Annals of the AAG publishes six times a year (January, March, May, July, September and November) with one issue per year being a special themed issue. The upcoming March 2017 Special Issue is on the topic of Mountains. See the contents of the latest issue or browse all past issues. If you are interested in submitting a paper to the Annals, please refer to the information for authors.

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‘Annals of the AAG’ Among Top 10 Ranked Geography Journals

July 1, 2016

The Annals of the American Association of Geographers, the flagship journal of the association, has once again been ranked among the top ten geography journals worldwide continuing a 15-year trend. According to the Journal Citation Reports released by Thomson Reuters this month, the Annals of the AAG placed eighth out of 77 journals in the geography category. The 2015 data also reveals that the journal’s Impact Factor increased from 2.291 to 2.756, the second highest score since 2000.

Impact Factor—figures that often confuse students and younger scholars—are an important indicator of a journal’s usage and impact. Being a scholar means engaging in original research that contributes something new to academic knowledge and practice. However, no scholar exists in isolation; they are influenced by the work of others and need to situate their research within context. Citing other people’s work is an important aspect of this. Collectively, data on citations indicate the relative scholarly value of different authors and publications.

Eugene Garfield, an information scientist, first proposed the idea of an international citation index in the mid-1950s. Garfield had observed the growth in scholarly research and was looking for a way to organize it. He felt that categorizing journals on the basis of citations would assist librarians in building their collections but it was 20 years before his ideas reached fruition as the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). “Impact Factor” made its debut in 1975 as a measure of citations and journal influence, and has been published annually ever since.

Put simply, the Impact Factor is a ratio between citable items and actual citations. It is calculated by taking the number of citations in the past year to articles published in the two previous years and dividing it by the total number of items published in those same two years. The items of journal content that are included in the calculation are full-length research articles, short communications, and review papers; other published pieces such as editorials, letters, book reviews, news items, and meeting abstracts are not counted as they do not present substantial research findings.

Academic output has proliferated in the last 40 years since Impact Factor was first launched. More than one billion citations have now been recorded and each year more than 12,000 scientific and scholarly journals and other materials are assessed for the JCR. A range of more sophisticated and nuanced metrics have been created including Eigenfactor and Article Influence Score, and data such as web page visits are also used to measure the significance of published work. Despite some controversies and misuse, however, the simple calculation of Impact Factor remains a prominent measure in journal evaluation.

Its significance lies in the fact that Impact Factor reflects what scholars themselves regard as noteworthy and useful research rather than being a subjective rating imposed by an outsider. In other words, citations are the strongest and most reliable indicator of scholarly value. Collectively, citations of a particular journal signify its relative importance within that scholarly field and the prestige of having a paper published in it.

Although the ranking, Impact Factor and Five-Year Impact Factor of the Annals of the AAG have all risen this year, the editors and the AAG aspire for these figures to increase further. That will be achieved by encouraging high quality manuscripts to be submitted, a dedicated editorial team and the valued contributions of many reviewers, resulting in the publication of excellent papers that contribute to the discipline of geography that, in turn, other scholars cite.

To find out more about the history and development of the Journal Citation Reports, read this excellent article: https://stateofinnovation.thomsonreuters.com/how-to-measure-up-impact-factor-2015

If you would like to consider submitting a paper to the Annals of the AAG, please refer to the Information for Authors. View the latest issue of the Annals of the AAG.

Journals

Consultation on sections in the ‘Annals of the AAG’

June 6, 2016

After the AAG meetings in Hawaii in 1999, a new format for the Annals of the Association of American Geographers was introduced wherein four sections and four editors were put in place to represent the breadth of the academic discipline of geography. Four major areas – (i) Environmental Sciences, (ii) Methods, Models, and Geographic Information Sciences, (iii) Nature and Society, and (iv) People, Place, and Region – were introduced as sections in the Annals to offset long-standing concerns about the lack of representation of certain aspects of the discipline (especially physical geography) in one of its flagship journals. Further, concerns about perceived biases accruing to a single editor were allayed by establishing an editorial team, with each editor taking responsibility for one of the four major subject areas.

With an understanding that the discipline is ever changing and defining a core or establishing specific fundamental areas of endeavor is always contentious, the sections were never meant to be immutable or permanent. On the recommendation of the Publications Committee, AAG Council is considering removing the Annals section headings while maintaining the integrity of an editorial team that represents the breadth of the discipline.

This is proposed in light of suggestions that the sections do not represent changes in the discipline and have the potential of characterizing articles in problematic ways. It is also clear that certain kinds of articles (e.g. papers that transcend the four major areas or papers that reflect on the discipline in general) are rarely submitted to the Annals and that the physical and environmental sciences are still underrepresented. Potential authors have raised concerns about not knowing to which section they should submit their work. Moreover, when two section editorships were advertised last year, more than one applicant stated that they were qualified to edit either section.

The proposal to remove the section headings is made with the understanding that the creation of an editorial team that represents the breadth and integrity of the discipline should continue. It is also understood that several substantive areas of geography can reside within the expertise of each editor but no one editor can encompass the whole discipline. The proposal is to remove the confusion and containment that accrues to the establishment of section headings while maintain the disciplinary integrity of an editorial team. The proposal is endorsed by the current four Annals editors and the two most recent past editors.

We would be most grateful for your views on this matter. Please send your thoughts, comments and suggestions to the AAG Publications Committee Chair, Stuart Aitken (saitken [at] mail [dot] sdsu [dot] edu) by 31 July 2016. All responses will be collated and presented to the AAG Council in Fall 2016 for their consideration.

Journals

‘Annals of the AAG’ Welcomes Two New Editors

January 11, 2016

Our flagship journal, the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, begins the new year with a change of editorship.

Bruce Braun and Richard Wright have completed their four year terms as editors of the Nature and Society, and People, Place and Region sections respectively. Their successors are James McCarthy and Nik Heynen.

James McCarthy is a Professor in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University. He is perfectly placed to edit the Nature and Society section of the Annals as his own research interests center around nature-society relations including political ecology, environmental policy and social movements, environmental history, and environmental politics.

McCarthy has considerable editorial experience in the field of nature-society geography including as editor of two major volumes – The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology (June 2015) and Neoliberal Environments (Routledge, 2007) – and three special issues of journals (Environment and Planning A, Geoforum and Antipode). He has also served on the Editorial Board of the Annals since 2008.

James is looking forward to leading this pivotal section of the Annals: “I consider nature-society research to be an absolutely essential area of scholarship for geography and for society, and the Annals to be the discipline’s leading journal in this critical domain. I am honored to have the opportunity to help recruit, develop, and publish the very best of geographic nature-society scholarship in the Annals.”

Nik Heynen is a Professor in the Department of Geography at University of Georgia. He has diverse interests including urban geography, urban political ecology, environmental justice, politics of race, urban social movements, and science and technology studies, which are well-suited to managing the breadth of manuscripts received in the People, Place and Region section of the Annals.

Heynen has considerable editorial experience including seven years in various editorial capacities at Antipode and was founding editor of the Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation Book Series at the University of Georgia Press, which to date has published 25 books with another 20 in process.

Nik is particularly excited about his new role: “At this point in my career, because of active research I have underway, I do not think there are many journals I would be as interested in editing as the Annals due to both the important disciplinary role it plays but also because of the diverse range of research results it publishes at such a high-quality.”

The AAG, the Publications Committee, and the rest of the Annals editorial team would like to express their heartfelt thanks to Bruce Braun and Richard Wright for their hard work over the last four years. They have presided over thriving sections, managing a heavy workload of manuscripts while ensuring that high quality and rigor was maintained.

The Annals of the AAG publishes six times a year (January, March, May, July, September and November) with one issue per year being a special themed issue. The upcoming March 2016 Special Issue is on Geographies of Mobility. See the contents of the latest issue or browse all past issues. If you are interested in submitting a paper to the Annals, please refer to the information for authors.

Journals

AAG Publishes New ‘GeoHumanities’ Journal

October 26, 2015

This month sees the publication of the first issue of a brand new journal from the Association of American Geographers: GeoHumanities.

GeoHumanities is a new kind of journal, connecting the traditional humanities to both science and the creative arts.

Dr. David Green, Publishing Director International for Routledge Journals, explains: “In the past decade, there has been a convergence of transdisciplinary thought characterized by geography’s engagement with the humanities, and the humanities’ integration of place and the tools of geography into its studies. GeoHumanities journal will now provide the latest, cutting edge information and peer-reviewed research in the field.”

The journal’s editing is being shared by two scholars well qualified for the job. Tim Cresswell is Professor of History and International Affairs at Northeastern University in Boston, as well as Associate Director for Public Humanities at its Humanities Center. Deborah Dixon is Professor of Geography at the University of Glasgow in the UK.

Dixon explains: “GeoHumanities is an opportunity to bring together original, scholarly articles that blur and blend disciplinary specialisms, but that also carve out new lines of inquiry, and new ways of doing research. And, it is an opportunity to present these alongside practice-based commentaries that speak to all manner of timely issues, from the wicked problems of the Anthropocene to the shifting sense of place created by geolocative media.”

In Issue 1, Cresswell notes, “a philosopher considers the role of place in western movies, a creative video artist engages with the politics of the Amazonian forest, a geographer explores the strange history of a perfumer, a poet contemplates the global connections enacted by a desert train, and a historian uses GIS to study eighth century China.”

This exciting new title adds to the AAG’s historic and prestigious portfolio of journals. As Executive Director Douglas Richardson points out, “This new GeoHumanities journal builds on a decade-long AAG initiative to engage research and scholarship at the intersections and convergences of Geography and the Humanities, as well as the recent publication (also by Routledge) of two ground-breaking AAG books examining these trends and interactions.”

Green adds: “It is Routledge’s pleasure to extend our publishing partnership with the AAG. We are most grateful to the Association, and specifically Doug Richardson and the teams of Editors, for continuing to entrust their journals to Routledge, one of the world’s leading geography publishers.”

All content in the first issue is freely available until the end of January 2016. Browse the papers on the Taylor and Francis website. New submissions are welcome at any time. Visit the AAG website for further information and guidelines.

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Theme and Events Planned Around the Launch of AAG’s New ‘GeoHumanities’ Journal

March 6, 2015

GeoHumanities, the AAG’s new interdisciplinary scholarly journal, co-edited by Tim Cresswell (History and International Affairs, Northeastern University) and Deborah Dixon (Geography, University of Glasgow) will begin publication in fall 2015. GeoHumanitites seeks to publish peer-reviewed articles that span conceptual and methodological debates in geography and the humanities; critical reflections on analog and digital artistic productions; and new scholarly interactions occurring at the intersections of geography and multiple humanities disciplines.

GeoHumanities will include full length scholarly articles of around 8,000 words in the GeoHumanities Articles section and shorter creative pieces of around 2,000-40,000 words that cross over between the academy and creative practice in the Practices and Curations section.

Submissions to GeoHumanities will undergo the same double-blind peer review process as other AAG journals on a dedicated ScholarOne Manuscript Central site. The AAG will begin accepting papers for review in the coming weeks. The call for papers will be announced online at www.aag.org.

Several sessions have been organized around the theme of “GeoHumanities” and the launch of the new AAG journal.

Learn More

Launch of GeoHumanities Journal

Thursday, April 23, 2015
1:20 p.m.-3:00 p.m.
Location: Gold Coast Room, Hyatt Regency, Chicago

The AAG will launch its new journal, GeoHumanities, at the AAG Annual Meeting in Chicago during this special panel session. The co-editors will discuss their visions for the journal.

Chair: Douglas Richardson, Association of American Geographers

Panelists:

Douglas Richardson, Association of American Geographers
J Nicholas Entrikin, University of Notre Dame
Tim Cresswell, Northeastern University
Deborah Dixon, University of Glasgow
Peter Bol, Harvard University

GeoHumanities Journal Reception

Routledge will host a special reception following the panel session to commemorate and celebrate the launch of the new GeoHumanities journal. Look for more details soon.

News

AAG Seeks Annals Editor

July 15, 2010