As a geography student, the majority of your coursework will consist of essay writing which makes it incredibly important to have credible sources for all of the articles that you utilize for your research. These journals set the standard for academic publishing and are great for modeling your own essays as well as being aspirational places to publish your research if you’re looking to go into academia. If you’ve been scrolling through Google Scholar for hours with no good options for sources, you can go directly to these prestigious journals to try to find what you’re looking for.
These are some of the biggest, and the most helpful to students, journals in the geography field:
This journal covers everything in the field of human geography from conceptual theories to more practical case studies. The published pieces are incredibly diverse covering topics like identity, cityscapes, environment, economic innovation, and more.
As the name implies, this journal is focused on development studies making it useful to geographers, anthropologists, and cultural history students alike. The articles explore current disparities in the human condition at multiple scales covering topics like gender inequality, poverty, civil conflict, debt, and ways to create a more equitable world.
This journal focuses on a sub-discipline of geography. The journal itself explores geographic drivers for economic changes, disparities, successes, and growth through articles on theoretical concepts and empirical studies.
This is a great journal for spatial data scientists as it covers innovations and discoveries of new applications of GIS technology for environmental surveying, engineering, monitoring, and more. This journal is particularly useful for any geographers with an interest in computer science.
GeoJournal is a social science journal featuring an interdisciplinary range of topics including economics, politics, culture, history, health, environment, and law.
This is a very important journal aimed to present solutions to human and environmental problems with a geographical lens. It takes on articles concerned with applications of both geographical theories and methodologies to solving issues of resource management, environmental degradation, and equitable disparities.
This is a geopolitical journal taking a focus on the geographical and spatial implications of politics rather than just policy on its own. It includes articles on sovereignty, mobility, political ecology, conflict, and more.
A particularly useful journal for any future urban planners, Urban Geography explores old and emerging theories of the discipline. It uses theoretical, empirical, and GIS-based investigations to detail the conditions of urban environments across the globe.
