JOURNAL

Annals of the American Association of Geographers

Read the Journal
Latest Articles
Submit to this journal

One of the world’s leading geography journals since 1911, AAG’s flagship publication publishes original, timely, and innovative articles that advance geographic knowledge in all facets of the discipline. Articles adhere to a high standard of scholarship and make an important contribution to geographic knowledge. They are grounded in the relevant literature of the specialization it represents and, where appropriate, establish relationships to themes within the broader discipline. Journal articles span across but are not limited to Geographic Methods; Human Geography; Nature and Society; and Physical Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences. Published 10 times a year, one special issue is dedicated to a single theme drawing on a diversity of papers from across the discipline.

Impact Factor: 3.9, ranking 18th out of 86 geography journals worldwide

Chrome is the recommended browser to access journal articles, as Firefox is currently not working.

Read the Journal

Manuscripts

Submission:
Manuscripts should be submitted electronically through ScholarOne Manuscripts. For detailed instructions about article submission see:

Types:
The Annals publishes papers in four categories: Regular Manuscripts, Special Issues, Forums, and Commentaries. The journal also publishes the AAG Presidential Address and memorials for former AAG Presidents and distinguished geographers.
  • Regular Manuscripts—Articles submitted for publication should be original, timely, innovative, and advance knowledge in all facets of the discipline. They should address significant research problems and issues, and be attuned to the sensibilities of a diverse scholarly audience. Articles should be a maximum of 11,000 words, including abstract, references, notes, tables, and figure captions.
  • Special Issues—Special Issues are curated by Editors and include a collection of shorter manuscripts (around 5000 words) about a specific theme or issue. Topics rotate across the areas covered by the Annals; each year there is one Special Issue that highlights the work of geographers on a significant global theme. Abstracts of potential articles will be solicited via an open call. The articles are by invitation only, led by an Annals Editor, and based on the evaluation of the abstracts.
  • Forums—Forums are a collection of short papers on a focused topic that are published together in the journal. Forums are an opportunity to showcase and advance significant intellectual insights in the discipline in a coherent and collective way. Forums consist of an introduction (2,500 words) and short individual papers (5,000 words each), with a maximum total word limit of 25,000. A forum is proposed by a forum organizer, and if accepted, the forum organizer works in tandem with an Editor to guide the papers through the peer review process. Forum proposals should provide a background and context, table of contents, timeline, and justification of the forum’s significance and relevance to the Annals audience.
  • Commentaries—Commentaries are responses to specific published Annals articles and appear in online form only. They should be submitted within one year of the publication of the original article and written in a style and tone that is professional, scholarly and concise (less than 2,000 words including references). Commentaries will be peer reviewed. Authors of the original article will be invited to respond to the commentary in a short endorsement and/or rebuttal. To submit a commentary, please see the commentary submission guidelines linked above.

Editors, Editorial Board and Production Team

 

ling bian
Ling Bian
Geographic Methods

University at Buffalo

ling bian

Ling Bian

University at Buffalo

lbian@buffalo.edu

In addition to being an editor, Bian is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University at Buffalo where she teaches geographic information systems and sciences, remote sensing, network analysis, and geostatistics. Her research interests are in the general area of geographic information science, but she has decades of publication experience in topics related to GIScience, remote sensing, and geographic image retrieval. In recent years she has focused on the ontological foundation of spatial representation, individual-based and spatially explicit behavior modeling, network analytics, and their implementations in the context of public health.

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. Bian is the Director of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis at Buffalo, which was formed in 1988, to promote excellence in GIScience research. Even though she is the methods editor, Bian believes that those wishing to publish their research in geography today should try to pay attention to more than the methods themselves. Scholars should look to tell a story with their research and strive to see the social relevance of their work.

Photo of David R. Butler
David R. Butler
Physical Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Texas State University

Photo of David R. Butler

David R. Butler

Texas State University

db25@txstate.edu

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!”

stephen hanna
Stephen Hanna
Cartography Editor

University of Mary Washington

stephen hanna

Stephen Hanna

University of Mary Washington

mapedit.aag@gmail.com

Stephen 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.”

Brian King
Brian King
Nature and Society, Human Geography

The Pennsylvania State University

Brian King

Brian King

The Pennsylvania State University

bhk2@psu.edu

King is a professor and Head of the Department of Geography at the Pennsylvania State. His research, teaching, and outreach focus on livelihoods, conservation and development, environmental change, and human health, centering on Southern Africa. More recently, his laboratory group (HELIX: Health and Environment Landscapes for Interdisciplinary eXchange) is examining how COVID-19 is transforming the US opioid epidemic. Beyond the university, his affiliations span numerous departments at Penn State and other institutions. At Penn State, he is a Faculty Research Associate with the Population Research Institute, Research Affiliate with the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, and Faculty Affiliate with the School of International Affairs and Consortium to Combat Substance Abuse. King is also an Honorary Research Associate with the African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town and was selected as a National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellow in 2017.

King served on the Editorial Board of the Annals from 2016-2019, as well as on the Editorial Boards of African Geographical Review since 2019 and of Geoforum since 2014. His book States of Disease: Political Environments and Human Health (University of California Press, 2017) received the Julian Minghi Distinguished Book Award, and was reviewed in April 2019 in The AAG Review of Books. An active member of several AAG Specialty Groups, including the Cultural and Political Ecology and Development Geographies specialty groups, he has also served in leadership roles, including successive terms as Director, Vice Chair, and Chair of the Developing Areas Specialty Group (which changed its name to Development Geographies in 2008).

King joins Human Geography editor Kendra Strauss of Simon Fraser University and Nature & Society Editor Katie Meehan of King’s College London to respond to the ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, including an increase in manuscript submissions and a decrease in reviewer availability. He will also support the editors’ ability to devote additional attention to upcoming special issues of the Annals. He will serve in the capacity of co-editor through December 31, 2023.

Katie Meehan
Katie Meehan
Nature and Society

King's College London

Katie Meehan

Katie Meehan

King's College London

katie.meehan@kcl.ac.uk

A human-environment geographer and water policy specialist by training, Katie Meehan is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at King’s College London and the lead PI of the Plumbing Poverty project. Prior to King’s, she was Assistant and then Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Oregon, from 2010 to 2019. Her expertise includes urban political ecology, infrastructure and social inequality, water insecurity and development, science and technology studies, climate change adaptation, and the politics of environmental knowledge at the science-policy interface. Meehan is a mixed methodologist, combining data from diverse sources such as ethnography, household surveys, Q method, and census data. Her research has appeared in journals such as Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Science, Geoforum, Environment and Planning D, Water International, Environmental Science and Policy, and WIREs Climate Change. Meehan is on the leadership team of the NSF-sponsored Household Water Insecurity Experiences Network.

kendra strauss
Kendra Strauss
Human Geography

Simon Fraser University

kendra strauss

Kendra Strauss

Simon Fraser University

kstrauss@sfu.ca

Kendra Strauss is both an Associate Professor and Director of the Labour Studies Program and The SFU Morgan Centre for Labour Research as well as an Associate Member of the Department of Geography at Simon Fraser University. Before taking on her current position, Strauss was an Urban Studies Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Glasgow and then held a permanent lectureship in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge from 2012 to 2014. Her focus as a geographer and feminist political economist revolves around labor politics, the definition of work, the regulation of labor markets, and geographical imaginations of environmental change. Strauss brings to the Annals a background in editing as the co-editor of two books, Precarious Worlds: Contested Geographies of Social Reproduction and Temporary work, agencies, and unfree labour: Insecurity in the new world of work. She has also served on the editorial boards of six journals in geography, labor studies, and political economy.

The Annals of the AAG has four editors, each of whom serve a four-year term, and are responsible for articles in one of the four thematic areas. An Editorial Board assists with editorial responsibilities, while staff from the AAG and Taylor & Francis manage various aspects of the production process.

American Association of Geographers team

Jennifer Cassidento, Publications Director and Managing Editor

Taylor & Francis team

Sarah Bird, Managing Editor
Lea Cutler, Production Manager

Editorial Board

Majed Akhter; King’s College London
Faisal Anzah, Kuwait University
Jennifer Baka; Pennsylvania State University
Joshua Barkan; University of Georgia
Sarah Battersby, Tableau Software
Linda Beale, ESRI
Matthew Bekker, Brigham Young University
Alana Boland, University of Toronto
Christopher Bone, University of Victoria
Carissa Brown, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Michaela Buenemann, New Mexico State University
Madelaine C. Cahuas, University of Minnesota
Paolo Cardullo, Universitat Oberta de Catalonia
Noel Castree, University of Manchester
Dawna Cerney, Youngstown State University
I-Chun Catherine Chang, Macalester College
Wendy Cheng, Scripps College
Jason Chilvers, University of East Anglia
Andrew Curley, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Andrew Curtis, Kent State University
Michelle Daigle, University of Toronto
Richard W. Dixon, Texas State University
Juan De Lara, University of Southern California
Kate D. Derickson, University of Minnesota
Christabel Devadoss, Middle Tennessee State University
Sarah Elwood, University of Washington
Mabel Gergan, Vanderbilt University
Jen Jack Gieseking, University of Kentucky
Jianya Gong, Wuhan University
Michael Goodchild, University of California, Santa Barbara
Cynthia Gorman, West Virginia University
Daniel A. Griffith, University of Texas at Dallas
Kevin Grove, Florida International University
Bartosz Grudzinski, Miami University
Heidi Hausermann, Colorado State University
Natalie Haussmann, University of Pretoria
Nik Heynen, University of Georgia
Youqin Huang, University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY)
Brian Jefferson, University of Illinois at Urbana
Wendy Jepson, Texas A&M University
Lawrence Kiage, Georgia State University
Mei-Po Kwan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Rebecca Lave, Indiana University
Mary Lawhon, University of Edinburgh
Amy M. Lerner, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)
Lin Liu, University of Cincinnati
Jamie Lorimer, University of Oxford
Yongmei Lu, Texas State University
Francis J. Magilligan, Dartmouth College
Eric Magrane, New Mexico State University
Ross H. Martin, Jacksonville State University
James McCarthy, Clark University
Kimberly Meitzen, Texas State University
Harvey J. Miller, The Ohio State University
Cary J. Mock, University of South Carolina
Sharlene Mollett, University of Toronto
Todd W. Moore, Fort Hays State University
Larissa Naylor, University of Glasgow
Kathleen Nicoll, University of Utah
Emma Norman, Northwest Indian College
Karen O’Brien, University of Oslo
David O’Sullivan, Victoria University of Wellington
Trushna Parekh, Texas Southern University
Jamie Peck, University of British Columbia and Western Sydney University
Laura Pulido, University of Oregon
Thomas F. Purcell, King’s College London
Malini Ranganathan, American University
Martin Raubal, ETH Zurich
Lynn M. Resler, Virginia Tech
Sergio Rey, University of California, Riverside
Paul Robbins, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Fausto O. Sarmiento, University of Georgia
Carol F. Sawyer, University of South Alabama
Rashad Shabazz, Arizona State University
Zehao Shen, Peking University
Alex Singleton, University of Liverpool
Seth E. Spielman, University of Colorado Boulder
Paul Torrens, New York University
Gabriela Valdivia, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Le Wang, University at Buffalo
Marion Werner, University at Buffalo, SUNY
Cherie Westbrook, University of Saskatchewan
Clayton J. Whitesides, Coastal Carolina University
Chaowei Yang, George Mason University
Emily T. Yeh, University of Colorado Boulder
Eun-Hye Yoo, University at Buffalo
Matthew Zook, University of Kentucky

For general inquiries about this journal email annals@aag.org.