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GeoJournal

Spatially Integrated Social Sciences and Humanities

Publishing model:

GeoJournal - Geojournal Suggested Author Guidelines

Barney Warf, Editor-in-Chief

Please take a look at suggestions given by the EiC designed to maximize the chances your paper is favorably reviewed by reviewers and the editor.

  1. The introduction should show the reader why your topic is important and the paper worth reading. In other words, why should we care? State the paper’s goals and objectives clearly. What is it you are trying to do? What do you hope to show or discover? What questions are you answering? How does your paper contribute to our understanding of this topic? What holes in the literature does it fill? Does it contribute to a debate somehow?
  2. The “literature review” (which should not be named as such) is a means of demonstrating that you have read and understood relevant works pertaining to this topic. It should show how your paper both comes out of earlier lines of thought and contributes to them. Most importantly, it should demonstrate a clear conceptual and theoretical stance. This is the issue that most authors have difficulty with. What general principles inform your work? Don’t over-rely on old works unless they are classics in the field; this gives your paper a dated feel. Emphasize trends in the recent literature, say within the last 5 to 10 years. The literature review should lead to the research questions.
  3. If you are doing a case study, provide a section with a contextualization. What is the place you are studying? Why did you select it? Is it representative of some broader trend or is it unique? Don’t include latitude and longitude coordinates, as no one cares. Do provide a location map. A contextualization should give the reader a sense of this region, its historical development, economic status, population size and composition, etc.
  4. Include a section on your data sources and methodology. Why type of data are you including? Is it qualitative or quantitative? How does analyzing this data allow you to answer your research questions? Is it a random sample or not? Can you show changes over time? Are there weaknesses in the data that you should admit? If you use interviews, read and cite some relevant works on interviewing strategies. The methodology section should convince the reviewer that your paper’s conclusions are sound, valid, and trustworthy.
  5. The Results and/or Conclusion section should summarize your major findings. What have you found that is new? Relate this part to the research questions you raised earlier, stressing your paper’s value-added to the literature. What have you shown that we did not know before? Are your results generalizable, that is, can they be applied more broadly? Are there analytical and/or policy implications?
  6. References should be put into Geojournal style. Be sure to italicize book titles and journal titles.


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