About Chinese Geographical Science

Chinese Geographical Science

Chinese Geographical Science is an international English-language journal published since 1991, sponsored by the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Changchun, Jilin, and published by Science Press of China and Springer. It is devoted to scientific and technological innovation in geography, to serving development in China, and to promoting international scientific exchange. It mainly covers physical geography and its sub-disciplines, human geography and its sub-disciplines, cartography and geographic information science, paying close attention to the major questions of the human–land relationship, population, resources, environment, globalisation and regional development. All of its papers are peer reviewed, and it publishes original research papers, review articles, short communications, perspectives, letters and highlights. Its print ISSN is 1002-0063 and its electronic ISSN 1993-064X.

The journal is one of two English-language geography journals published from Chinese Academy of Sciences institutes, and it has the more northerly home: Changchun, in China's northeast, where its sponsoring institute studies the geography and agroecology of a region of black soils, wetlands and borderlands. From that base it has, since 1991, presented Chinese geographical research to the world in English.

Sponsor and Editorial Home

The journal is sponsored by the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology (NEIGA), Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Changchun, Jilin — the institute formerly known as the Changchun Institute of Geography, whose name appears in the journal's copyright line alongside Science Press. NEIGA's own research concentrates on the geography, wetlands, agriculture and environments of Northeast China, and the institute's editorial office address for its geographical journals is on Shengbei Avenue in Changchun's high-technology zone.

The institute sponsors a notable family of geography publishing: alongside Chinese Geographical Science in English, it is associated with the Chinese-language Scientia Geographica Sinica (published since 1980, sponsored by the institute with the Geographical Society of China) and with Geographical Science, a comprehensive Chinese geographical journal governed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and sponsored by the institute and the society. Chinese Geographical Science is the English-language member of that family — the journal through which the Changchun institute's geographical community addresses international readers.

Scope and Subject Coverage

The journal covers all fields of geography, in its publisher's description: physical geography and its sub-disciplines, human geography and its sub-disciplines, cartography and geographic information science. Its stated concerns run to the issues the world is concerned with: the human–land (man–land) relationship, population, resources, environment, globalisation and regional development. It makes geographical information available for the study of global issues and regional comparisons, and presents research in English for an international readership.

Analyses of its content show what that means in practice. Its most-discussed subjects include China itself as a study object, hydrology, land use, economic geography and urbanisation; its most-cited work includes studies of the regional differences of China's urban expansion derived from remote sensing. Recurring research themes identified in scope analyses include geospatial analysis and remote sensing applied to environmental change, urbanisation and land-use dynamics, and sustainable development and ecological research on natural-resource management. In short, the journal publishes the geography of a rapidly transforming China — its cities, waters, farmland and ecosystems — using the full modern toolkit of the discipline, from field-based physical geography to satellite remote sensing and GIS.

Article Types and Peer Review

The journal publishes original research papers, review articles, short communications, perspectives, letters and highlights, all subject to peer review, with articles published online through SpringerLink. The mix is the modern general-journal mix: full research and reviews as the core, with shorter and more discursive formats — perspectives, letters, highlights — allowing the journal to carry commentary and rapid communication alongside archival research. Its publisher describes it as making geographical information available for global-issue studies and regional comparison, a function its shorter formats serve directly.

Publication Model and Frequency

Chinese Geographical Science has been published since 1991, with Scopus coverage running continuously from 1991 to the present — a long, unbroken international record for a Chinese regional-institute journal. Directory listings describe it as a quarterly journal, and its volumes appear through Springer, which distributes it internationally. Its longevity matters: an English-language geography journal maintained from Changchun through the whole period of China's opening and urbanisation has accumulated an archive that tracks, in peer-reviewed form, three decades of transformation of the Chinese landscape and society.

The journal publishes in English throughout, distinguishing it from its Chinese-language sister journals at the same institute and making its contents directly available to geographers worldwide without translation.

Indexing and Standing

The journal is indexed in Scopus and the other services that carry Springer geography titles, and category assessments place it in the first quartile in Geography, Planning and Development and in Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous) in recent Scopus-based rankings. Its contributing affiliations are headed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, followed by institutions such as Nanjing University and Northeast Normal University — the latter reflecting its Changchun roots in the northeast's geographical community.

Within Chinese geography, its standing is that of a senior English-language general journal, complementary to the Beijing-published Journal of Geographical Sciences: the two journals together constitute China's English-language geography flagship pair, one from the academy's Changchun institute and one from its Beijing institute and national society.

Readership and Community

The journal's readers are geographers and related environmental and social scientists worldwide who work on China, and Chinese geographers publishing for the world. Its content serves physical geographers studying hydrology, land use and environmental change; human geographers studying urbanisation, economic geography and regional development; and the remote-sensing and GIS specialists whose methods now run through both halves of the discipline. Its stated purpose of serving development in China gives it a policy-adjacent readership as well, among those who use geographical research on resources, population and environment in planning and management.

For international scholars of China, the journal offers something specific: peer-reviewed Chinese geographical research, in English, edited from within the academy institute system that conducts much of that research — including work on the northeast region, its wetlands and agriculture, which are less covered in Western journals than China's coastal megacities.

The Northeast Institute's Geography

The journal's Changchun base is not incidental. Northeast China — the Songnen and Sanjiang plains, the Changbai mountains, the border regions with Russia, Mongolia and North Korea — is a distinctive geographical laboratory: black-soil farmland of national food-security importance, some of China's largest wetlands, resource cities undergoing industrial transition, and cold-region environments sensitive to climate change. The sponsoring institute's name, joining geography to agroecology, reflects that regional mission. A journal edited there naturally carries strength in wetland, agricultural and cold-region geography alongside its general coverage, and its institute's scientists have been central to Chinese research on the Sanjiang Plain wetlands and northeast black soils.

That regional depth, combined with national and global coverage, gives the journal its character: a general geography journal with a home region it knows exceptionally well.

Access and Identification

Chinese Geographical Science is published through Springer (SpringerLink, journal 11769), where its aims and scope and article archive are maintained. It is identified by print ISSN 1002-0063 and electronic ISSN 1993-064X, and cited by the abbreviation Chin. Geogr. Sci.

Published since 1991 from Changchun, sponsored by the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology and published by Science Press and Springer, Chinese Geographical Science remains one of China's two senior English-language geography journals — a peer-reviewed record of physical and human geography, cartography and geographic information science, attentive above all to the human–land relationships of a changing China and to the global questions of population, resources, environment and regional development.