Geoinformation or misinformation? a review of the geographic description of study areas in published academic articles (original) (raw)
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International Journal of Health Geographics
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Referencing practices in physical geography
Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment, 2013
Accurate citation practices are important, from both an ethical and a scientific point of view. Using an easily reproducible, previously published method, we assess citation accuracy in 120 articles published in the first half of 2011 and listed under ‘Physical Geography’ in Thomson Reuters’ ISI Web of Knowledge Science Citation Index. Our results indicate that at least 19% of citations in physical geography do not provide clear support for the statements they are meant to support. These results are in line with previously published findings for ‘field-orientated’ sciences. We propose that both authors and editors help remedy this problem, by employing more rigorous writing and editing practices.
Area, 2010
Because research on the publication practices of academic geographers has been limited to the quantification of journal articles cited in easily searchable databases such as Thomson Reuters' Web of Science or Elsevier's Scopus, the question remains whether journals that are not indexed by these databases flourish or perish under the increasing pressure to publish in outlets with the highest impact factors. To answer this question, we have compiled a database with the complete bibliographies of all Belgian professors that have been working in Belgium in the field of human geography over the last 40 years. Based on our quantitative analysis of 810 articles published in 304 different journals, we come to the conclusion that human geographers from the Dutchspeaking north of the country are currently publishing more in English-language journals and in journals indexed by the Web of Science than their colleagues in the seventies or the eighties, but less in the Dutch and the French languages and in Belgian geographical journals. In the French-speaking south of the country, this evolution is less pronounced, but still present. Even though we applaud the tendency to publish in English and in Web of Science journals because it increases the academic rigour of scholarly research, we are afraid that it hampers the role of academic geography in geography education and society as a whole.
Because research on the publication practices of academic geographers has been limited to the quantification of journal articles cited in easily searchable databases such as Thomson Reuters' Web of Science or Elsevier's Scopus, the question remains whether journals that are not indexed by these databases flourish or perish under the increasing pressure to publish in outlets with the highest impact factors. To answer this question, we have compiled a database with the complete bibliographies of all Belgian professors that have been working in Belgium in the field of human geography over the last 40 years. Based on our quantitative analysis of 810 articles published in 304 different journals, we come to the conclusion that human geographers from the Dutch-speaking north of the country are currently publishing more in English-language journals and in journals indexed by the Web of Science than their colleagues in the seventies or the eighties, but less in the Dutch and the French languages and in Belgian geographical journals. In the French-speaking south of the country, this evolution is less pronounced, but still present. Even though we applaud the tendency to publish in English and in Web of Science journals because it increases the academic rigour of scholarly research, we are afraid that it hampers the role of academic geography in geography education and society as a whole.
A perspective on problems and prospects for academic publishing in Geography
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This commentary highlights problems of inequity in academic publishing in geography that arise from the increasing use of metrics as a measure of research quality. In so doing, we examine patterns in the ranking of geographical journals in the major global databases (e.g. Web of Science, Scopus) and compare these with a more inclusive database developed by the International Geographical Union. The shortcomings of ranking systems are examined and are shown to include, inter alia, linguistic bias, the lack of representation of books and chapters in books, the geographical unevenness of accredited journals, problems of multi-authorship, the mismatch between ranking and social usefulness and alternative or critical thinking, as well as differences between physical and human geography. The hegemony of the global commercial publishing houses emerges as problematic for geography in particular. It is argued that the global community of geographers should continue to challenge the use of bibliometrics as a means of assessing research quality.
Geographic Data for Academic Research: Assessing Access Policies
Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 2004
Data availability is a key issue affecting the collective well-being of society. Economic and legal scholars have argued that the current, relatively open, access-to-data environment in the United States is beneficial to advancing knowledge and the economy. However, little empirical evidence exists to validate the extent to which various access policy environments do or do not contribute to the productivity of academic researchers. Our research aimed to evidence support or lack of support of various data policies in the context of access to, and use of, geographic data within the university research environment. We synthesized a set of twenty-three recommended access-to-data principles from recommendations set forth in the literature. An online questionnaire strove to gain sufficient information to determine whether recommended principles were adhered to in the acquisition of each specific data set and whether scientists were productive in their use of such data sets. Productivity was assessed in terms of five measures. We hypothesized that data-sharing relationships would be more productive for science if the data policies confronted by scientists in their use of digital geographic data conformed with the recommended policies advocated in the literature. The data indicated relatively clear statistical significance in testing the principles of "adherence to pricing at marginal cost or less" and "provision for availability of metadata." Correlated with the productivity of scientists, the collected survey data evidenced non-support of the first principle and support of the second. The latter finding suggests that government, private sector, and academic suppliers of geographic data should give high priority to the documentation of metadata in order to stimulate the more widespread use of available spatial data. This article describes the survey and statistical methods employed in researching this problem and presents the results of testing the two recommended principles. The implications of the findings are discussed.