JOURNAL

The Professional Geographer

 

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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: 1.9, ranking 64th out of 173 geography journals worldwide

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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:

Call for Editor

The American Association of Geographers (AAG) seeks applications for the Geographic Methods / Physical Geography, Earth, & Environmental Sciences editor for The Professional Geographer, consistent with the AAG JEDI Strategic Plan. The new editor will be appointed for a four-year term that will commence on January 1, 2028.

The AAG seeks an editor who will solicit, review, and accept for publication, articles in the broad field of geography. The AAG Council expects that the new editor will review manuscripts from across the breadth and depth of intellectual activity in contemporary geography with the ability to understand and assess cutting edge Geographic Methods and Physical Geography, Earth, & Environmental Sciences research and manuscripts. The AAG Council further expects that The Professional Geographer will publish items that represent the very best thinking in geography. The editor should be eager to act as an intellectual entrepreneur to attract the very best work being produced.

In support of these goals, the editorial candidate should have a PhD in Geography or a related field and possess demonstrated expertise withing the subject areas of Geographic Methods and Physical Geography, Earth, & Environmental Sciences, a record of scholarly achievement, a broad perspective on the discipline of geography, respect and affection for its diversity, and an ability to work constructively with authors during the review process. Institutional support for the new editor (especially time released from teaching) is desirable but not mandatory. The AAG will provide a stipend of $10,000 per year for the editor, to be used for expenses and honorarium at the editor’s discretion.

The editor will work in coordination with the Professional Geographer Editor. The Publications Director bears primary responsibility for the logistics of processing manuscripts, and for assembling and coordinating the publication of each issue of the journal in collaboration with the editors and the journal’s publisher. Editor candidates, therefore, should share the AAG Council’s vision of an accessible, decentralized, and collaborative editorship for The Professional Geographer.

AAG strives to build an editorial team that reflects the diversity of the community we work in and the institutional diversity of our field.  AAG encourages applications from traditionally underrepresented groups such as women, visible minorities, Indigenous peoples, LGBTQ2SI people, veterans, and people with disabilities. Applicants from teaching institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Predominantly Black Institutions (PBIs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), Tribal Colleges, and other Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), research institutions, Associates’ degree-granting institutions, and private or public sector and nonprofit organizations are welcome.

 

Please submit the complete application package by November 2, 2026, via this form. The application package should include the following information:

For questions, please contact AAG Publications Director Jennifer Cassidento at jcassidento [at] aag [dot] org.

Editorial and production teams

 

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

Portland State University

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

guochenpg@gmail.com

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.”

Editorial Assistant

Elizabeth Sedor, University of Mary Washington

 

American Association of Geographers team

Jennifer Cassidento, Publications Director
Elizabeth Sawyer-Melodia, Production Editor

 

Taylor & Francis team

Katie Gezi, Portfolio Manager
Lea Cutler, Production Manager

 

Editorial Board

Luis F. Alvarez León, Dartmouth College, USA

Yuko Aoyama, Clark University, USA

Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen, Arizona State University, USA

Mark Barnes, Morgan State University, USA

Madelaine Cahuas, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, USA

Netra Chhetri, Arizona State University, USA

Yongwan Chun, University of Texas at Dallas, USA

Anindita Datta, University of Delhi, India

Nerhene Davis, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Terence Day, Okanagan College and Simon Fraser University, Canada

LaToya Eaves, University of Tennessee, USA

Michael Fabris, University of British Columbia, Canada

Chen-Chieh Feng, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Jennifer Fluri, University of Colorado Boulder, USA

D. Asher Ghertner, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, USA

Amy Glasmeier, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

Daikwon Han, Texas A&M University, USA

Heidi Østbø Haugen, University of Oslo, Norway

Canfei He, Peking University, China

Melissa Heil, Illinois State University, USA

Alison Heppenstall, University of Glasgow, UK

Elaine Ho, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Tsung-yi Michelle Huang, National Taiwan University, Taiwan

Kelly Huh, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, USA

Demetrice R. Jordan, Harvard Medical School, USA

Jeon-Young Kang, Kyung Hee University, South Korea

Bandana Kar, U.S. Department of Energy, USA

Meghan Kelly, Syracuse University, USA

Daehyun Kim, Seoul National University, South Korea

Hyun Kim, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA

Eden Kinkaid, University of Delaware, USA

Loretta Lees, Boston University, USA

Wei Li, Arizona State University, USA

Aaron Mallory, Arizona State University, USA

Laurel Mei-Singh, University of Texas at Austin, USA

Lorena Muñoz, California Lutheran University, USA

Sarah Nicholls, Swansea University, UK

Hanson Nyantakyi-Frimpong, University of Denver, USA

Edward Park, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Arrianna Marie Planey, University of North Carolina, USA

Steven Puttick, Oxford University, UK

Risha RaQuelle, American Association of Geographers, USA

Stephanie Rogers, Auburn University, USA

Shouraseni Sen Roy, University of Miami, USA

Luis Santiago, University of Central Florida, USA

Kayla Stan, University of Southern Mississippi, USA

Ming-Hsiang Tsou, San Diego State University, USA

Donggen Wang, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China

Sandy Wong, Ohio State University, USA

Megan Ybarra, University of Washington, USA

Henry Yeung, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China

Min Zhang, Nanjing University, China

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