JOURNAL

Annals of the American Association of Geographers

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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

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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, Ling 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.

Paul Adams
Paul Adams
Human Geography

University of Texas at Austin

Paul Adams

Paul Adams

University of Texas at Austin

paul.adams@austin.utexas.edu

Paul Adams is the longtime director of the Urban Studies Program at the University of Texas, first in the UT Department of Geography and the Environment now in the Department of American Studies. His service to AAG includes founding the Media Geography Specialty Group (now Media and Communication). From 2015 to 2020, he served as associate professor II at the University of Bergen, funded by the Research Council of Norway. In 2001, he was a Fulbright fellow at McGill University and University of Montreal, Quebec. His current research focuses on sociospatial and political aspects of digital media, digital humanities, and culturally specific understandings of environmental risk and climate change.

Adams is the author of three monographs: The Boundless Self: Communication in Physical and Virtual Spaces (Syracuse University Press, 2005); Atlantic Reverberations: French Representations of an American Election (Ashgate Press, 2007); and Geographies of Media and Communication: A Critical Introduction (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), which received the 2009 James W. Carey Media Research Award from the Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research, and has been translated into Chinese. He has also served as co-editor of four volumes: Textures of Place with Steven Hoelscher and Karen E. Till (University of Minnesota Press, 2001); the Ashgate Research Companion to Media Geography with Jim Craine and Jason Dittmer (Routledge, 2014); Disentangling: The Geographies of Digital Disconnection with André Jansson (Oxford University Press, 2021); and the Routledge Handbook on Media Geographies with Barney Warf (2021).

Brian King
Brian King
Nature and Society

The Pennsylvania State University

Brian King

Brian King

The Pennsylvania State University

bhk2@psu.edu

Brian 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.

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.”

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

Clio Andris, Georgia Tech

Faisal Anzah, Kuwait University

Jennifer Baka, Pennyslvania State University

Joshua Barkan, University of Georgia

Mike Batty, University College London

Matthew Bekker, Brigham Young University

Luke Bergmann, University of British Columbia

Alana Boland, University of Toronto

Christopher Bone, University of Victoria

Carissa Brown, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Michaela Buenemann, New Mexico State University

Lindsey Carte, Arizona State University

Perry Carter, Texas Tech University

Noel Castree, University of Manchester

Dawna Cerney, Youngstown State University

I-Chun Catherine Chang, Macalester College

Ipsita Chatterjee, University of North Texas

Jason Chilvers, University of East Anglia

Bikramaditya K. Choudhary, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Russell Congalton, University of New Hampshire

Meghan Cope, University of Vermont

Andrew Crooks, University at Buffalo

Andrew Curley, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Aparajita De, University of Delhi

Jason Dittmer, University College London

Richard W. Dixon, Texas State University

Suzana Dragicevic, Simon Fraser University

Sarah Elwood, University of Washington

Rachel Franklin, Newcastle University

Christopher Gaffney, New York University

Mabel Gergan, Vanderbilt University

Michael Goodchild, University of California, Santa Barbara

Amy Griffin, RMIT University

Kevin Grove, Florida International University

Tony Grubesic, University of California, Riverside

Bartosz Grudzinski, Miami University

Heidi Hauserman, Colorado State University

Natalie Haussman, University of Pretoria

Marco Helbich, Utrecht University

Guntram Herb, Middlebury College

Nik Heynen, University of Georgia

Ayodeji Iyanda, Prairie View A&M University

André Jansson, Karlstad University, Sweden

Brian Jordan Jefferson, University of Illinois at Urbana

Wendy Jepson, Texas A&M University

Naya Jones, University of California Santa Cruz

Lawrence Kiage, Georgia State University

Mei-Po Kwan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Nina Lam, Louisiana State University

Rebecca Lave, Indiana University

Amy M. Lerner, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)

Bin Li, Central Michigan University

Jamie Lorimer, University of Oxford

Yongmei Lu, Texas State University

Francis J. Magilligan, Dartmouth College

Ross H. Martin, Jacksonville State University

James McCarthy, Clark University

Erin McElroy, University of Washington

Kimberly Meitzen, Texas State University

Cary J. Mock, University of South Carolina

Imelda K. Moise, University of Miami

Sharlene Mollett, University of Toronto

Todd W. Moore, Fort Hays State University

Paul Isolo Mukwaya, Makerere University

Daisuke Murakami, The Institute of Statistical Mathematics

Larissa Naylor, University of Glasgow

Kathleen Nicoll, University of Utah

Emma Norman, Northwest Indian College

Karen O’Brien, University of Oslo

Youjeong Oh, University of Texas at Austin

Jamie Peck, University of British Columbia

Laura Pulido, University of Oregon

Thomas F. Purcell, King’s College London

Lynn M. Resler, Virginia Tech

Paul Robbins, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Samuel Rufat, CY Cergy Paris University

Fausto O. Sarmiento, University of Georgia

Carol F. Sawyer, University of South Alabama

Patrick Shabram, Front Range Community College

Shih-Lung Shaw, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Mimi Sheller, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Zehao Shen, Peking University

Kendra Strauss, Simon Fraser University, Canada

Daniel Sui, Virginia Tech

Jean-Claude Thill, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Gabriela Valdivia, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Marion Werner, University at Buffalo, SUNY

Cherie Westbrook, University of Saskatchewan

Clayton J. Whitesides, Coastal Carolina University

John Wilson, University of Southern California

Levi John Wolf, University of Bristol

Charlotte Wrigley-Asante, University of Ghana, Ghana

Yang Xu, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Emily T. Yeh, University of Colorado Boulder

Sofia Zaragocin, Universidad San Francisco de Quito

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