JOURNAL

The Professional Geographer

Read the Journal
Latest Articles
Submit to this journal

With a focus on short articles in academic or applied geography, emphasizing empirical studies and methodologies, this journal provides a forum for new ideas and alternative viewpoints. In addition, it publishes research notes and commentaries. These features may range in content and approach from rigorously analytic to broadly philosophical or prescriptive. Originally a publication of the American Society of Professional Geographers, in 1949 it became a journal of the AAG when the two organizations merged. It is published six times per year.

Impact factor: 1.8, ranking 58th 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

Submissions:
Manuscripts should be submitted electronically through ScholarOne Manuscripts. The PG publishes manuscripts in four categories: Regular Manuscripts, Forums, Commentaries, and Research Notes. Following are guidelines for each type of manuscript:

Editorial and production teams

 

Photo of Heejun Chang
Heejun Chang
Editor, Geographic Methods and Physical Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences

Portland State University

Photo of Heejun Chang

Heejun Chang

Portland State University

changh@pdx.edu

Heejun Chang is a professor and former chair of the department of geography at Portland State University. His publication record is extensive having published 131 peer-reviewed articles on topics related to hydrology, water resources, human modification of the environment, and environmental change, his areas of expertise. Heejun has experience with publication in a wide variety of journals, both disciplinary and interdisciplinary, and is regarded as a high quality peer reviewer, an accolade for which he received an excellent reviewer award from Journal of Hydrology. He has also served as guest editor for special issues of Climate and International Journal of Geo-Information.

Heejun’s vision for his term as editor of The Professional Geographer is one of diversity, inclusion, and innovation. He sees the journal as a premier location for bridging traditional divides among human, physical, and GIS scholarship and hopes to foster a balance in submissions from the various facets of the geographic discipline. Heejun believes that encouraging more cross-generational scholarship as well as manuscripts co-authored with practitioners will help to cultivate fresh ideas within the discipline and that The Professional Geographer can play a key role in circulating these debates. Lastly, as the AAG has become more international in its membership, Heejun welcomes scholarship from the global geography community including academics from the global south or whose primary language is not English.

Guo Chen
Guo Chen
Editor, Human Geography and Nature & Society

Michigan State University

Guo Chen

Guo Chen

Michigan State University

guochen@msu.edu

Guo Chen is an associate professor of Geography and Global Urban Studies in the College of Social Science, a core faculty member of the Asian Pacific American (APA) Studies Program, and an affiliated faculty member of the Asian Studies Center and Environmental Science and Policy Program at Michigan State University. A human geographer with broad interests in urban, economic, crititical, and environmental areas, she is also a teacher scholar and public intellectual who has authored and co-authored over 50 publications with a focus on inequality, urban poverty, housing rights for the poor, slums, migrants, urbanization and land use, urban governance, and social and environmental justice, including articles in The Professional Geographer and other leading geography journals. She is co-editor of Locating Right to the City in the Global South (Routledge 2013) and “Interrogating unequal rights to the Chinese city” (Environment and Planning A Special Issue based on her initiated sessions at the AAG meeting), as well as initiator and editor of a Focus Section for The Professional Geographer titled “Hidden Geographies: Migration, Intersectionality, and Social Justice in a Global Contemporaneous Space” (2023) featuring research articles on race, gender, ethnicity, class, nationality, citizenship, and social justice, by ten diverse scholars around the world. Her public scholarship includes many op-eds for key policy forums and her professional society, TV interview, and webinars. She has served on geography/urban studies flagship journals’ editorial boards (The Professional Geographer and Journal of Urban Affairs), serving as ad hoc reviewer for close to 50 journals, many programs and book publishers, and over a hundred organized professional sessions, invited talks, and conference presentations. Guo is a recipient of many prestigious awards in research, teaching, leadership, and service, including a Wilson Center Fellowship, university-wide teaching and women’s professional achievement awards, and an AAG specialty group outstanding service award.

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.”

American Association of Geographers team

Jennifer Cassidento, Publications Director jcassidento@aag.org
Robin Maier, Production Editor rmaier@aag.org

Taylor & Francis team

Sarah Bird, Managing Editor
Lea Cutler, Production Manager

Editorial Board

Luis F. Alvarez León, Dartmouth College
Karen Arabas, Willamette University
Jennifer Baka, Penn State
Nancy Beller-Simms, NOAA
Gina Bloodworth, Salisbury University
Guo Chen, Michigan State University
Netra Chhetri, Arizona State University
Yongwan Chun, The University of Texas at Dallas
Somayeh Dodge, University of California, Santa Barbara
Jean Ellis, University of South Carolina
Chen-Chieh Feng, National University of Singapore
Tekleab Gala, Chicago State University
Amy L. Griffin, RMIT University
Morgan Grove, USDA Forest Service
Laam Hae, York University
Daikwon Han, Texas A&M University
Jim Herries, Esri
Lily House-Peters, California State University, Long Beach
Matthew Johnson, University of Nottingham
Daehyun Kim, Seoul National University
Hyun Kim, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Evan R. Larson, University of Wisconsin-Platteville
Jovan Scott Lewis, University of California, Berkeley
Stefan Leyk, University of Colorado, Boulder
Becky Mansfield, Ohio State University
Sarah Praskievicz, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
Shouraseni Sen Roy, University of Miami 
Rinku Roy Chowdhury, Clark University
Luis Santiago, University of Central Florida
Jida Wang, Kansas State University
Jinfei Wang, University of Western Ontario
Dai Yamamoto, Colgate University
Megan Ybarra, University of Washington

For general inquiries, email profgeog@aag.org