30 years of IJGIS: the changing landscape of geographical information science and the road ahead

The International Journal of Geographic Information Science (IJGIS), established in 1987, is the first academic journal devoted solely to Geographical Information Science (GIS) research. This editorial highlights milestones of the journal development and its influences on the field. IJGIS research articles and special issues have been effective in publishing the state of the art and emerging research accomplishments. In light of the changing landscape of GIS, IJGIS welcome papers on meta-analysis studies, literature reviews, and research foresight. This editorial outlines the underlying thinking and expectations for these papers in future volumes. IJGIS aspires to publish research of high novelty and broad interest that pushes the boundary of fundamental and applied GIS. As an independent, multidisciplinary journal driven by the community of authors, reviewers, and readers, community support is key to realizing the aspiration of a major influence on GIS research.     

Authorship,Collaboration, and Gender: Fifteen Years of Publication Productivity in Selected Geography Journals

In academia, publication productivity, defined as the number of peer-reviewed articles published and the frequency of citations, is a primary factor in the assessment of tenure and promotion. One of the most cited gender differences in academia is the “productivity puzzle,” which suggests that women publish less than men, thereby affecting every aspect of a woman's academic career. Peer-reviewed articles published in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers (Annals) and The Professional Geographer (PG) between 1995 and 2006, and in four subdisciplinary journals between 2005 and 2009, as well as citation reports, were used to explore whether gender differences are present in publication productivity. Gender differences were evident in the proportion of women authors, the frequency of collaboration, and the number of citations across a broad range of prestigious geographic journals. For all journals studied, women were underrepresented, especially in the authorship positions that equate to notions of respect and merit. Although the number of collaborative articles increased during the study period, single-authored papers are the dominant mode of publication for both men and women for most geographic journals. The authorship patterns for frequently cited articles generally mirror those for all articles. Because the frequency of collaborative publication was high for women, the dual trends of a general increase in publication collaboration and increasing participation of women in academic geography bodes well for increased female productivity as it relates to publishing. Nevertheless, it is important to note that, currently, males as lead or single authors represent the predominant voice of geography within the journals examined in this study.     

Successful ETV Teaching

Abstract

This article represents a report by two geographers who have had successful experiences using educational television. In the first instance, educational television is being used to produce two enrichment series for the public schools of Texas. In the second, a university is using educational television to provide first-class instruction while at the same time relieving professors from an increasing number of freshman courses. The two authors have been involved in sessions concerning ETV at the last two NCGE conventions. It was their observation that interest was high; certainly the discussions indicated a desire for more knowledge by the membership. This article, therefore, will provide the profession with provocative and stimulating ideas on what can be done with educational television.     

Establishing Preservice Partnerships: Geography and Social Studies

Abstract

Great strides have occurred in geographic education resulting in the development of new geographic teaching strategies and geography materials. Despite these developments, many social studies methods professors are still using outdated geographic materials, methods, and techniques. In 1992, the Missouri Geographic Alliance established a unique relationship with social studies methods professors in Missouri. This partnership was established at a four-day, intensive geography/social studies conference that used an innovative model for its development. The outcome of this conference was a strong partnership between social studies methods professors and geographers in Missouri. A result of this partnership has been an increase in the number of beginning teachers involved in the alliance movement, and ultimately, the use of up-to-date geographic teaching strategies, methods, and materials in their classrooms.     

AN ANALYSIS OF DATA ON HOME JOURNEYS BY CHINESE IMMIGRANTS IN CANADA, 1892–1915∗

The Young Geographers, an informal organization of American geographers, flourished from 1936 to 1943. One of its projects in 1940 and 1941 was the compilation and publication of lists of contemplated research by some 170 Young Geographers. Their listed research interests were relatively narrow in subject and geographical area. The successor of the Young Geographers was the American Society for Professional Geographers which merged with the Association of American Geographers in 1948 under a democratic constitution which assured that young geographers and their research would be recognized.     

THE LEGENDARY “REDISCOVERY” OF GEORGE PERKINS MARSH

The conventional narrative regarding the American reception of George Perkins Marsh, author of Man and Nature (1864), is that his work and ideas were “lost,”“forgotten,” or “neglected” until Lewis Mumford “rediscovered” him and introduced him to geographers at the University of California‐Berkeley through The Brown Decades (Mumford [1931] 1955) and until Carl Sauer made him known to the profession at large beginning in 1938. This article upends the conventional narrative by looking at earlier references to Marsh's later versions of Man and Nature, which were published as The Earth as Modified by Human Action from 1874 to 1907. Analysis reveals that a number of geographers and historians cited these editions between 1875 and the early 1950s. Examining the legend of loss and rediscovery suggests the value of methods utilized in reception studies for research on the history of geography.     

Hydrological Research and the Status of Physical Geography Journals: Increasing the Impact of Physical Geography in the Academy

Physical geographers are often confronted with the decision of whether to publish in geography or nongeography journals. The present study seeks to quantify the number of articles with a significant hydrology content published in geography versus hydrology journals by physical geographers from 1997 to 2002 using the ISI Web of Knowledge electronic database. Of 690 articles published in the 10 selected geography and hydrology journals during the period of study, over four‐fifths were published in hydrology journals. Based on our interpretation of the data, the comparatively smaller audience in geography and the risk of acquiring fewer citations compels physical geographers to publish in hydrology journals for increased visibility. A critical mass of physical geographers should consider publishing some of their work in physical geography journals to elevate the status of geography in the academy.     

NETWORKS OF RELATIONS AMONG A SET OF GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNALS*

The network of interrelationships among a set of 22 geographic journals is investigated, using data on the frequency with which articles published in one journal cite papers published In another. The analysis considers journals published in 1970–1972 and 1980–1982. Journals with a focus on regional science weaken their connection to others in the set. The Annals retains its position at the core of the journal space that is identified using multidimensional scaling; Environment and Planning A invades the niche vacated by the regional science journals.     

We Are All Makers: The Method of Keyword Selection in Teaching and Learning Human Geography

Abstract

Geographers continue to engage in public debate “inside the Beltway” by participation within and through federal agencies and through the National Research Council. Several examples illustrate the level and kind of this engagement, which has been concentrated on environmental and spatial data and analysis themes. Most professional geographers have the opportunity to engage in this form of public debate through participation in the activities of the National Research Council. The level of this participation has been surprisingly strong, given the small size of the community of professional geographers, and has helped to shape both U.S. and international research agendas relevant to geographic research. Participation, however, is concentrated in a few programs and individuals, raising questions about the sustainability of geography's voice in this public activity.

     

A Framework for Teaching,Learning, and Assessing Environmental Issues

Abstract

A twelve-question framework for teaching, learning, and assessing environmental issues was created through analysis of environmental textbooks and interviews with professors and researchers who specialize in the environment. Concepts in the framework include: causes, scale, spatial distribution, longevity, consequences, risks, economic implications, solutions, obstacles, social values, stakeholders, political status, behavior changes, and personal actions. The twelve-question framework was submitted to a validity panel of geographers. Statistical analysis of responses from the panel indicates that the framework is valid.     

On Geographic and geography

New Zealand Geographic is one of a number of geographical magazines published in the English‐speaking world that make little or no reference to work by academic geographers. It recently launched a New Zealand Geographic Trust to promote research into ‘New Zealand's life, culture and sciences’ and collaborated with four other publishers of geographical magazines to raise awareness of climate change: the work of academic geographers is again ignored. This exclusion of academic and school geography from such enterprises raises important issues regarding the discipline's public profile in New Zealand and suggests the need for greater public engagement activity by the country's geographers.     

Getting to the Bottom of It: Tools,Techniques, and Discoveries of Deep Ocean Geography

The initial impetus for developing a specialty in ocean geography resulted from the need to resolve applied problems in coastal resources, as opposed to development of oceanographic research methods and concepts. However, the development in the last 10 to 20 years of sophisticated technologies for ocean data collection and management holds tremendous potential for mapping and interpreting the ocean environment in unprecedented detail. With the understanding that ocean research is often very costly, yet deemed extremely important by large funding agencies, geographers now have the opportunity to perform coastal and marine studies that are more quantitative in nature, to formulate and test basic hypotheses about the marine environment, and to collaborate with geographers working in corollary subdisciplines (e.g., remote sensing, GIS, geomorphology, political geography as pertaining to the Law of the Sea, etc.), as well as with classically-trained oceanographers. This article reviews, for the non-specialist, the newest advances in mapping and management technologies for undersea geographic research (particularly on the ocean floor) and discusses the contributions that geographers stand to make to a greater understanding of the oceans.     

Not all those who Wander are lost: exploring human mobility using a smartphone application

Since the 1970s, activity diaries have been the principal source of data used by geographers and urban planners to capture human mobility patterns; however, memory recall requirements and participant burden are limiting features of this approach. While handheld GPS devices were initially used to simply validate activity diaries, the ubiquity of smartphones makes GPS-based technology a viable alternative for collecting human mobility data. This research visualises human mobility patterns using spatiotemporally GPS-rich traces collected from 24 participants during a pilot study of a new smartphone application—Wander. The results illustrate the utility of such data for capturing individuals’ multi-nodal activity spaces to better understand people–place interactions in the context of increasingly fluid and mobile lifestyles. Finally, we draw on our experiences of implementing this pilot study to discuss the benefits and limitations of this technology for its broader application in domains such as transportation planning, tourism management, and in the management of crime and disorder.     

Geographic EducationResearch and the Changing Institutional Structure of American Education

Professional geographers are paying increasing attention to the development of a research agenda concerning geographic education. In doing so, it is essential that geographers pay close attention to fundamental changes in the structure of education itself. Traditional educational methods and procedures associated with industrial society are being replaced by new and innovative modes of education that are linked to post-industrial social organization. This article explores the implications of these changes for understanding the teaching and learning of geography in the future.     

Changing the Way Albanian Geographers Look at Their Land

Abstract

Four geographers from the University of Nebraska held a workshop for Albanian geographers in Tirana in October of 1993.¹ Its purpose was to introduce concepts and technological developments that have been a part of American geographical training for 40 years. The meeting represents an initial step in helping the Albanians not only to develop a common background for collaboration with geographers of other countries, but also to assist them in contributing to the rebuilding of their own society. It is hoped that further training can take place to include the education of Albanian graduate students in the United States.     

中国地缘政治学25年研究进展（英文）

The world is currently undergoing profound changes, with a shift in global power centers and reordering of international power spaces, assigning new theoretical tasks as well as providing new opportunities for geopolitics research in China. Despite the peripheral nature of geopolitics research within their discipline, geographers have played a fundamental role in its origins and revival, from classical geopolitics(i.e., the German school of geopolitics and the Anglo-American school of geo-strategy), to internal geopolitics(i.e., electoral geography and administrative geography), to the new geopolitics(i.e., formal geopolitics), and to recent critical geopolitics(i.e., popular geopolitics). Although only few of these researchers were from China, great strides have been made in geopolitics and political geography research in China, with useful results being obtained. After demonstrating the importance of geopolitics research for the rising China, this review provides an overview of geopolitics papers led by China's geographers in the past few decades, describing their achievements, the problems they have faced, and the directions they have taken. Twenty-five years of geopolitics have produced a range of accomplishments, with a growth in the quality and size of research groups and institutions, an expanding literature, and some geo-strategic breakthroughs. Obviously, geographers have successfully reclaimed geopolitics, but some crucial topics are still absent or weak in the geopolitical research agenda, and need to be pursued vigorously. Most of the attention, from a positivistic perspective, has been paid to reflecting Western geopolitical thoughts, describing patterns of international power relations, and offering foreign policy advice(in a problem-focused orientation), rather than determining mechanisms and performing theoretical analyses(in a theoretical orientation), resulting in a lack of independent value judgments and of a theoretical basis for the subject. Moreover, in comparison with other disciplines, in terms of its academic community, research output, and status as a discipline, geopolitics research is very different from how it was three or four decades ago, when it was mainly the property of geographers, rather than political scientists and diplomats. For now, whether to support national geo-strategies or to enhance the diversity of the discipline, the involvement of geographers in geopolitics needs to become both more intensive and more extensive. The top priority is to strengthen theoretical, methodological, and problem- oriented research, including studies of geopolitical philosophy and methodology, the theoretical framework of the subject, global geopolitical evolution and shifts in power space, the roles of major powers and their geo-strategies, as well as China's surrounding geopolitical environment.     

Geographical categories: an ontological investigation

This paper reports the results of a series of experiments designed to establish how non-expert subjects conceptualize geospatial phenomena. Subjects were asked to give examples of geographical categories in response to a series of differently phrased elicitations. The results yield an ontology of geographical categories-a catalogue of the prime geospatial concepts and categories shared in common by human subjects independently of their exposure to scientific geography. When combined with nouns such as feature and object, the adjective geographic elicited almost exclusively elements of the physical environment of geographical scale or size, such as mountain, lake, and river. The phrase things that could be portrayed on a map, on the other hand, produced many geographical scale artefacts (roads, cities, etc.) and fiat objects (states, countries, etc.), as well as some physical feature types. These data reveal considerable mismatch as between the meanings assigned to the terms 'geography' and 'geographic' by scientific geographers and by ordinary subjects, so that scientific geographers are not in fact studying geographical phenomena as such phenomena are conceptualized by na ve subjects. The data suggest, rather, a special role in determining the subject-matter of scientific geography for the concept of what can be portrayed on a map. This work has implications for work on usability and interoperability in geographical information science, and it throws light also on subtle and hitherto unexplored ways in which ontological terms such as 'object', 'entity', and 'feature' interact with geographical concepts.     

Twenty-five years of progress in geopolitics research: Efforts from China’s geographers

The world is currently undergoing profound changes, with a shift in global power centers and reordering of international power spaces, assigning new theoretical tasks as well as providing new opportunities for geopolitics research in China. Despite the peripheral nature of geopolitics research within their discipline, geographers have played a fundamental role in its origins and revival, from classical geopolitics (i.e., the German school of geopolitics and the Anglo-American school of geo-strategy), to internal geopolitics (i.e., electoral geography and administrative geography), to the new geopolitics (i.e., formal geopolitics), and to recent critical geopolitics (i.e., popular geopolitics). Although only few of these researchers were from China, great strides have been made in geopolitics and political geography research in China, with useful results being obtained. After demonstrating the importance of geopolitics research for the rising China, this review provides an overview of geopolitics papers led by China’s geographers in the past few decades, describing their achievements, the problems they have faced, and the directions they have taken. Twenty-five years of geopolitics have produced a range of accomplishments, with a growth in the quality and size of research groups and institutions, an expanding literature, and some geo-strategic break-throughs. Obviously, geographers have successfully reclaimed geopolitics, but some crucial topics are still absent or weak in the geopolitical research agenda, and need to be pursued vigorously. Most of the attention, from a positivistic perspective, has been paid to reflecting Western geopolitical thoughts, describing patterns of international power relations, and offering foreign policy advice (in a problem-focused orientation), rather than determining mechanisms and performing theoretical analyses (in a theoretical orientation), resulting in a lack of independent value judgments and of a theoretical basis for the subject. Moreover, in comparison with other disciplines, in terms of its academic community, research output, and status as a discipline, geopolitics research is very different from how it was three or four decades ago, when it was mainly the property of geographers, rather than political scientists and diplomats. For now, whether to support national geo-strategies or to enhance the diversity of the discipline, the involvement of geographers in geopolitics needs to become both more intensive and more extensive. The top priority is to strengthen theoretical, methodological, and problem- oriented research, including studies of geopolitical philosophy and methodology, the theoretical framework of the subject, global geopolitical evolution and shifts in power space, the roles of major powers and their geo-strategies, as well as China’s surrounding geopolitical environment.     

Withered Geography

This commentary is a response to an article by Jay R. Harman in the November 2003 issue of The Professional Geographer. I argue that Harman's claim that scholarly disciplines offer social “returns” in a competitive “market” obscures the fundamentally political nature of how social resources are allocated and how social needs are defined. Harman would have us subordinate scholarly research to agendas set elsewhere, by politicians and other powerful interests, but I argue that such a vision would turn geographers into mere technicians. A healthier role for the discipline is for geographers to seek ways of asserting intellectual leadership and of shaping social agendas along more humane and socially just lines.