‘In the critical department’: refreshing the Scottish Geographical Journal

… it is intended, in the critical department of this Journal, to supply henceforth a complete record of works bearing on Geographical subjects … Anon. (1885a, p. 64)

A new Editorial Team

Following the latest hand-over in the ‘slow-motion geographical relay race’ (Clayton & Warren, 2016, p. 183) that is the editorship of the Scottish Geographical Journal, the ‘baton’ has now been passed from St Andrews – specifically from Dan Clayton and Charles Warren – to a new Editorial Team based in Glasgow (in the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences). This new team spans four of us, combining expertise across human geography (Emma Laurie, Chris Philo) and physical geography (Martin Hurst, Rhian Thomas), and with a variety of cross-disciplinary linkages across to the earth sciences, geospatial sciences, social sciences and humanities. Our capacities will be extended by reaching out to a revivified Editorial Board, currently being updated with renewed responsibilities, and of course by seeking the generous assistance of reviewers spread globally and across (and beyond) academia.

We wish to acknowledge the tremendous efforts of our predecessors, Dan and Charles (St Andrews: 2016–2021 [Clayton & Warren, 2016]), and before them Tim Mighall and Lorna Philip (Aberdeen: 2009–2016 [Philip & Mighall, 2009]), Jim Hansom and Joanne Sharp (Glasgow: 2005–2008 [Hansom et al., 2006]), and Alison McCleery (Napier: 1999–2004 [McCleery, 1999]). These have been the editors during the period when the Scottish Geographical Magazine (SGM) became renamed as the Scottish Geographical Journal (SGJ), although it is interesting that even in the SGM’s founding year of 1885 – as in the epigraph above – it was already on occasion being termed a ‘Journal’. The deeper implications of the epigraph will be inspected below, in the context of briefly inspecting the journal’s history and drawing out certain ‘lessons’ for us, going forward, as the new editors. More importantly perhaps, we will conclude this editorial with a statement of how we intend to ‘refresh’ the journal, including various initiatives for introducing greater flexibility into the normal expectations of what and how an academic journal will publish. That said, we know that we are building on the accomplishments and indeed visions of our predecessors from 1885 onwards, thereby sitting ‘on the shoulders of giants’, and we are fully aware that in some instances we are reworking ideas and innovations that have been attempted previously.

A ‘small nation’ journal in ‘a world of giants’

Before moving in these directions, however, we do want to say something to what Sharp and Hansom (2007, p.153), among others, have mused about the fate and purpose of ‘a regional geography journal,’ meaning a journal entertaining some connection with a particular location in the world rather than claiming a more ‘systematic’, ‘sub-disciplinary’, topical or other kind of specialist focus. At least two of Geography’s most high-profile journals retain some sense of a ‘regional’ angle in their titles, namely Annals of the Association of American Geographers¹ and Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, but few would dispute their ‘global’ outlook and reach. Nonetheless, there are numerous Geography journals (continuing and discontinued) where a ‘country’ reference remains; e.g. Australian Geographer, Irish Geography, New Zealand Geographer, Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift, South African Geographical Journal. Others, meanwhile, declare some sense of place association at a range of spatial scales from the continental to the highly local; e.g. Arab World Geographer, Swansea Geographer.

There is much to be argued about the merits or demerits of such journals, and the SGJ has carried papers on exactly this theme, initiated in part by previous editors (Hansom & Sharp, 2008; Sharp & Hansom, 2007: see McKendrick, 2008; Pawson, 2007; Savage & Sidaway, 2008). Ultimately we, as the new editors, subscribe to the ringing declaration by John Agnew (2007, p. 158) that ‘in a world in which small is not yet beautiful to all and eclectic is still a term of abuse rather than praise, there is still a vital role for a general-purpose geography journal from a small nation.’ Setting out a store critical of how ‘“Giantism”, in publishing, business and cultural life, seems very much in the ascendancy’ (Agnew, 2007, p. 154), something evident too in many quarters of academic life, Agnew extols the virtues of seeing from a ‘small’ place – in Scotland’s case, from what he positively designates as a ‘small nation’ – but, crucially, not in a manner ever descending into defensive parochialism. Despite detecting moves in the SGM during the mid-twentieth century towards ‘a more defensive and localist posture, with articles mainly on Scottish topics by authors largely at Scottish universities’ (Agnew, 2007, p. 156),² he also notes the marked efforts of editors since the 1990s to instil in the journal a more international, cosmopolitan outlook in terms of what is tackled in its pages, how it is tackled, and by whom it is tackled. In that spirit, then, we envisage a journal which is placed – indelibly in, of and from somewhere – and which, almost as part of its DNA, critically engages ‘ideas that should be confronted because they naturalise and theoretically reproduce the world of Giants’ (Agnew, 2007, p. 158). But such a vision must never slip into a mandate for only keeping an eye to the local; nor any sanction for a dangerous ethnocentricism suspicious of ‘others, guarding other sheep in other valleys’ (Geertz, 1973, p. 30); and nor indeed any extolling of an empiricism that simply says ‘it doesn’t happen like that here’ (in some corner of Scotland) as a way of debunking bigger, bolder theories, models, perspectives and speculations.

With respect to the Scotland context, then, we would echo previous editors:

One of our aims for the content of SGJ was to expand its international outlook by publishing original papers on any branch of Geography whilst maintaining an interest in, and concern with, issues relating to Scotland and highlighting high quality geographical scholarship from Scottish academics. (Hansom & Sharp, 2008, p. 227).

We anticipate receiving contributions that address any and all aspects of Geography: human, physical, environmental and all species of subdiscipline or subfield contained therein, as well as with cross-disciplinary ambition. We also envisage reaching over into matters of school-level geography or ‘applied geography’ beyond the conventional academy. At the same time, we indeed seek contributions on, of or about Scotland, where Scotland is the focus of enquiry (as a whole or in its particular regions, landscapes and locales; in itself or its interconnectedness to other parts of the world; past, present or future). But we also seek contributions from Scotland, meaning interventions from academic geographers (and others) based in Scotland but working on other world regions, settings and environments elsewhere, suggesting a view from ‘here’ looking out to the wider expanses of ‘there’. And overall, we are intent on creating a sense of these contributions – from whoever, on whatever subject-matter – being gathered in Scotland or, more accurately, in the pages of our distinctive journal edited in this vibrant ‘small nation’, for global consideration. To borrow from Clayton and Warren (2016), we have hopes for a journal that is ‘Globally Scottish’ but perhaps also, with apologies for coining an awkward phrase, ‘Scottishly Global’.

Re-reading the SGM/SGJ and a few lessons

The Scottish Geographical Society was officially founded at ‘a large and influential meeting’ (Bartholomew, 1885, p. 47) held on 28th October, 1884, at the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce. The meeting was attended, and the Society’s foundation supported, by an impressive array of Scottish scientists and scholars – chemists, physicists, meteorologists, engineers, historians, theologians – alongside eminent figures, almost but not entirely men, from the walks of commerce, law, diplomacy and civic administration. ‘Permission to add Royal to the Society’s name was readily granted … as early as 1887’ (Newbigin, 1934, p. 262), and so was born the Royal Scottish Geographical Society (RSGS). The back story to the Society’s foundation, including the crucial role played by Mrs A. Livingstone Bruce, daughter of the famous missionary-explorer David Livingstone (Bartholomew, 1912; McCleery, 1999), has already been well-told, notably on the fiftieth and then centennial anniversaries of the foundation (Lochhead, 1984; Mill, 1934; Newbigin, 1934).³

Attention has also been given to the contribution made by the Society’s ‘magazine’, the Scottish Geographical Magazine (SGM), both to its role in the functioning of the Society – a means of knitting together its membership, dispersed in both their interests and residences⁴ – and in the development of geographical knowledge, and academic (big-‘G’) Geography, in Scotland and beyond (Lochhead, 1981, pp. 106–107; Newbigin, 134, pp. 260–261). On the Society’s 100th anniversary, Ian H. Adams et al. (1984) surveyed ‘the making of Scottish geography’ and used the SGM ‘extensively’ in the process, while on its 130th anniversary Michael Pacione (2014) provided a substantive ‘historiography’ of ‘Scottish geography’ that charts, categorises and interprets the circa 3000 articles, from over 1400 authors, published in SGM/SGJ between 1884 and 2014.⁵ Moreover, Pacione (2014, p. 2) underscores the ‘responsibility’ that all who identify as part of ‘the Scottish Geographical community’ hold for promoting ‘Geography in Scotland’ – and, as we might add, Geography from Scotland – which may mean, ‘for research-active academics, … offering their work for consideration for publication in the Scottish Geographical Journal. The latter activity is of fundamental importance for the continuing success of the Society’s journal.’ Pacione acknowledges this to be a personal view, but it is one to which we the new editors also subscribe, and indeed one that we extend beyond just research-active geographers to others whose geographical interests and sensibilities lie outwith the university sector (see below).

Particularly instructive here is the fundamental role in the life of the SGM played by Marion I. Newbigin, a rare early-twentieth century instance of a woman countering the prejudices of ‘university mediaevalism’ (Anon., 1934a, p.331) to become a major shaper of academic inquiries across diverse fields (Maddrell, 2009, esp. pp. 60–77). Trained in biology and zoology, she made distinctive – still today highly relevant – contributions to work on animal, plant, human and regional geographies (e.g. Newbigin, 1922); and her obituarist ventured that she was ‘the first of the British pioneers in geography who gave complete expression to her ideas’ (Anon., 1934a, p. 333). She was appointed Editor of the SGM in 1902 and served in this capacity right through to 1934, when, with the saddest of timing, she died just having completed all the work required for the edition of the SGM celebrating the Society’s half-centenary anniversary.⁶ For a never-to-be-matched 32 years, Newbigin was the beating heart of the SGM, ‘the person who really established the Scottish Geographical Magazine as a highly respected organ of geography throughout the world’ (Lochhead, 1981, p. 107; McCleery, 1999, p. v).⁷

Society and Magazine were indeed very much founded together, the one closely supporting the other. At the Society’s foundation meeting, it was stated that, ‘[i]n the absence of an acting editor, the first number of the magazine has been prepared under the superintendence of the Hon. Editor, Mr. H.A. Webster, and the Publications Committee,’ with a later reference to ‘the medium of the monthly magazine’⁸ (Bartholomew, 1885, p. 49: on Hugh Webster, see Lochhead, 1984, p. 107). Newbigin (1934, p. 260) described the magazine as ‘the most obvious of … activities’ of the Society, along with the lectures given at both Society headquarters in Edinburgh and the city branches. For years after 1885, the SGM included notes on the proceedings, events and achievements of the RSGS, nowhere more obviously than in the 1934 half-centenary issue edited by Newbigin. The umbilical link between the SGJ and the RSGS undoubtedly still remains today, with the former still formally owned by the latter and with Taylor & Francis contracted to act as publisher, although it is true that the RSGS now has little obvious presence in the pages of the SGJ (something that the new editors will wish to revisit). Also worth noting, as do Clayton and Warren (2016, p. 183), is the linkage between the SGJ and the RSGS’s (substantial) newsletter The Geographer (see https://www.rsgs.org/the-geographer).

Perhaps the most intriguing early reference to the work of the SGM appeared in the words of the epigraph opening our Editorial, taken from the very first issue, which underscored an intention to survey the published literature carrying geographical knowledge – and hence an embryonic academic Geography – of many different stripes. This was to be the work undertaken by ‘the critical department of this Journal,’ where ‘criticism’ meant dealings with literature, but in many respects the broader objective stated here – ‘supply[ing] henceforth a complete record of works bearing on Geographical subjects’ – is precisely what the SGM and, subsequently, the SGJ has aimed to meet. In passing, it is worth noting that there was no mention of any specifically Scottish dimension to the ‘Geographical subjects’ under scrutiny. Arguably, with the gradual diminishment over the past century of reporting in the SGM/SGJ on the workings of the RSGS, the publication has effectively narrowed down (or broadened out, depending on one’s perspective) to being solely ‘the critical department’, which is why we now position ourselves, in the title of our Editorial, as the denizens and operatives of this at root highly ‘scholarly’ department. The logical extension of this shift was perhaps the 1999 renaming of the SGM as the SGJ, inspired by the pre-1999 editor, Allan Findlay.⁹ As McCleery (1999, p. iv) explains, ‘the word ‘magazine’ has come to have associations different from those of a scholarly periodical,’ whereas, ‘[f]or good, or for bad, the title ‘journal’ has come to imply academic respectability.’

In similar vein, it is revealing to hear how Newbigin (1934, p. 261) characterised the ‘original object’ of the SGM:

The original object was, on the one hand, to make the Magazine a means of establishing contacts with geographers and travellers and with other Geographical Societies throughout the world, and on the other, to furnish summaries of the progress of geographical knowledge, whether purely scientific or of economic interest. It was intended, that is to say, not to be merely a means of giving publicity to accounts of travel and exploration, but to bring its readers into touch with the general scientific world.

The first aim here spoke to the work of the parent Society as a kind of intermediary, a broker even, between itself, other Geographical Societies and a multitude of ‘geographers and travellers’ across the world, while the second spoke more to the labours of ‘the critical department’ in ‘furnish[ing] summaries of the progress of geographical knowledge.’ It amplified this goal as also one of outreach to a non-specialist ‘public’, possibly for those who might wish to ‘apply’ this geographical learning economically or for self-educatory edification. Again, it is worth noting the absence of any specific Scottish dimension to the ‘geographical knowledge’ whose progress was to be covered. In various ways, we might say that the vision of the work of the SGM elegantly advanced here by Newbigin has clear affinities with our own, even in how she balances both the ‘purely scientific’ and the more ‘applied’ aspects of this geographical knowledge (see below).

Another route into discerning lessons for our own editorship is to read the first contribution ever to appear in the SGM. We confess to being disappointed to discover that it was the ‘Inaugural Address, delivered before the Scottish Geographical Society, Edinburgh, 3rd December, 1884’ by the then-famous explorer-geographer Henry Morton Stanley (Stanley, 1885). We say ‘disappointed’ because, from our own standpoint, it is dismal that Stanley’s version of geography – imperialist, colonialist, mercenary, ‘militant’ – was an exemplar of what our discipline entailed in times past (Driver, 1991, 2000, Chap.6). It is entirely unsurprising that he was invited to give the Society’s inaugural address, given that a key theme for him was the use of geographical knowledge for commercial gain by entrepreneurs based in Britain’s leading seaport cities, a theme that led him to agitate for the founding of Geographical Societies in the likes of ‘Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Hull, Brighton, Bristol or Plymouth’ (Stanley, 1885, p. 1). Indeed, he boldly declared that ‘an enterprising shipowner, or an enterprising manufacturer, if he [always a ‘he’] wishes to know his business well, it is essential that he should know something of geography’ (Stanley, 1885, p. 1). Stanley duly called for ‘a society of geography, not an ornamental addition to a great city, but from a utilitarian point of view’ (Stanley, 1885, p. 2); adding militaristically that ‘I should like to see the maps in men’s hands to be studied as generals study them before planning campaigns, … the man of capital pondering over them like one who intends constructing a railroad over a country, or a military engineer designing defensive works’ (Stanley, 1885, p. 17). Remarkably, at one point in his address Stanley lambasted his Edinburgh audience for previously not supporting one of his money-making schemes, in this instance pertaining to the Congo river and basin, insisting that ‘[i]f you are wise you will not quarrel with us for entertaining such a project’ (Stanley, 1885, p. 15).¹⁰ At least one participant involved in the early years of the Society, Hugh Robert Mill, found Stanley to have ‘the haughty bearing of a dictator’ (Mill, 1934, p. 277).

In a negative sense, then, we have copious clues here about what we believe Geography ought not to be: the exact opposite of what the Russian anarchist geographer Prince Peter Kropotkin, also writing in 1885, envisioned when declaring ‘What Geography Ought to Be’ (Kropotkin, 1885). Kropotkin envisioned a ‘scientific’ geography in the service of dispelling the sentiments of class, racial and national ‘jealousy’; a Geography in pursuit of humanitarian tolerance and enablement extending across the globe; and a Geography espoused by the current Editorial Team. Kropotkin, an exile in London, was known to the Scottish Geographical Society: at a meeting of the Society on 1st December, 1886, he delivered a lecture on ‘Siberia’s Tablelands, Mountains, Plains and Tundras,’ supposedly to be published in a subsequent issue of the SGM (Anon, 1887) but it never appeared. Kropotkin’s fellow anarchist, the French geographer Elisée Reclus, did publish in the SGM, though, offering an ostensibly quite technical paper on the teaching of Geography using ‘globes, disks and relief’, but also rejoicing in ‘the beauty of [the geographer’s] work’ comparable ‘with that produced by artists, painters, sculptors, or ceramists’ (Reclus, 1901, p. 397). Reclus was a massive influence on the Scottish geographer-polymath Patrick Geddes, who used the pages of the SGM to write a lengthy two-part biographical appraisal of Reclus, covering and certainly not denying his anarchist and anti-establishment politics, the title of which unhesitatingly cast Reclus as ‘A Great Geographer’ (Geddes, 1905a, 1905b; see also Dunbar, 1974).

Returning to Stanley’s address and holding one’s nose against the overt ‘jingoism’ that features throughout, there are a few claims that can still be extracted and turned in a more hopeful direction. One is the fact that Stanley steadfastly spoke of Geography on a world stage, consistently underlining how that ‘local knowledge which you have of your city [and which] may be called geographical knowledge’ (Stanley, 1885, p. 2) was intimately connected to geographical knowledge gathered about and deployed in relation to other places dispersed across the globe. Of course, his view was that Geography in this vein would be all about knowing other places so as best to exploit them, but the meta-principle here, of a non-parochial approach to Geography that does not stop outside the immediate locality or home nation-state, does retain great merit. This is particularly the case if conjoined with his reflection – an oddly un-Stanley-like one, many might feel – on the value held by Geography ‘as a science brimful of interest to … living men [sic.] with warm sympathetic hearts, desirous of increasing [their] fellowship with humanity in general’ (Stanley, 1885, p. 16). Such words would not have been out of place in Kropotkin (1885), emphasising that indeed context is everything.

Additionally, alongside urging the utility of geographical knowledge to ship-owners and manufacturers, Stanley (1885, pp. 1–2) asked:

… why should it not be a subject of interest to the merchant’s clerk and book-keeper, or to the manufacturer’s assistants, employees, clerks and packers – ay, even down to the smallest boy of the factory; and to extend the question further, why should it not be studied by every resident, male and female, of this country?

Possibly connecting with Stanley’s own distinctly humble upbringing, there was almost a class logic at work in this question, a plea for geographical knowledge to be made available and of use to the poorest labouring classes, potentially brought into the orbit of everybody – significantly, male or female – whatever their rank in British, possibly even global, society. If, once again, the wider context of Stanley’s admonitions can be bracketed out, then there is here an impulse to rendering Geography relevant and accessible, maybe as a ‘democratic’ gesture, that could serve as a lesson of sorts for the SGJ of the present moment.

In sum, therefore, there are various lessons that can be taken from the earlier years of the SGM. They hint at the importance of valuing academic Geography – and also a more diffuse geographical knowledge – and the crucial role for an eclectic, one might say ‘general geography’ journal that solicits, collects, presents (and represents), curates, analyses, evaluates and otherwise makes available, as attractively as possible with appropriate maps and visuals, all manner of ‘Geographical subjects’. The lessons hint too at the importance of not imposing artificial boundaries on that knowledge, of not cribbing and confining it to local (in this instance Scottish) places, landscapes and locales, but rather of letting it surface and roam across the globe in a manner – after Kropotkin or Reclus, but not Stanley – that is always open-handed, generous and generative, never instrumental or exploitative. The ‘progress’ of geographical knowledge, developing through time, is also advocated, notably by Newbigin, whether as ‘pure’ scientific-intellectual development or in a more ‘applied’ guise. The lessons further indicate the potential for rendering this knowledge accessible and useable by a diverse range of audiences, in which regard the curiously inclusive cast of Stanley’s otherwise less-than-pleasant Geography, spilling across class boundaries, is surprisingly instructive. But also instructive are the contributions of Mrs A. Livingstone and, much more so, Marion I. Newbigin as signals of a Society and Magazine/Journal escaping the snares of what Newbigin’s obituarist termed a ‘mediaeval attitude to women’ (Anon., 1934a, p. 331). These intimations of a diverse, inclusive approach to shaping and sharing Geography – if of course needing to be extended in so many more directions, the Global South most obviously included – are certainly telling ones for us, the new Editorial Team, as we pick up the baton of the SGJ.

A more-than-flexible journal

Following on from our statements about a vision for a journal in, of and from Scotland, as well as an envisaged diversity and inclusiveness of both contributions and contributors, let us conclude with some more programmatic notes about the enhanced flexibility of the SGJ’s ‘offering’ to the academy and beyond. Prefacing these notes, the new editors wish to underline how persuaded we are by the so-called 2012 San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA: see https://sfdora.org), which advocates new, diverse, inclusive and flexible ways to assess research quality. Specifically, it urges national research assessment bodies, research funders, higher education institutions and academic journals themselves to decrease emphasis on Journal Impact Factors (JIFs), given all the problematic distortions and biases known to exist within them. To that end, while as editors we will occasionally be encouraged by the journal publishers to consider JIFs, we undertake not to be swayed by JIFs in our decision-making about what to include in the journal, nor about how we might ‘compete’ with other journals. We will also not report in subsequent editorials on the JIF performance of the SGJ. Moreover, we are impressed by supplementary reflections emerging from DORA about what journals might be able to do in order to create more hospitable ‘homes’ in which academics and others can publish, including the push for greater flexibility in journal publishing options. To that end, we are particularly impressed by the call ‘to capitalise on the opportunities provided by online publication (such as relaxing unnecessary limits on the number of words, figures, and references in articles, and exploring new indicators of significance and impact)’ (https://sfdora.org/read/). We acknowledge that the SGJ will continue to have a hard-copy presence, which will impose some limits on what we can offer due to a notional total journal page limit for each calendar year, but the principle here, of greater flexibility in the journal’s ‘offering’ to authors, is one to which we definitely subscribe.

Relatedly, the Editorial Team has a vision for what might be termed the purpose and ethics of academic review, here meaning specifically the refereeing – and also our editing – of contributions submitted to the SGJ. While published nearly 20 years ago, we agree with almost all of the core principles stated by Leigh Turner (2003) for ‘effective peer review’ in academic journals. Of her five ‘F.A.I.T.H’ principles, we most want to underline the importance of Fairness and Helpful, as captured in the following statements:

Peer-reviewers must strive to avoid two extremes. First, they must avoid writing unnecessarily devastating, vitriolic commentaries that caricature the claims of authors and engage in self-aggrandizement at the expense of authors. Second, peer-reviewers must avoid writing platitudinous commentaries that fail to offer meaningful, justifiable criticisms of scholarly research. Effective peer review is fair, judicious, discerning, well reasoned, carefully considered, and informative. Fair peer review involves striving to identify both the weaknesses and the strengths of manuscripts. Fair review avoids making peremptory judgements and sweeping statements. (Turner, 2003, p. 182)

Peer reviewers must recognize that their primary responsibility is to prepare reviews that are helpful to authors and editors, and ensure that journals maintain high intellectual standards. Helpful reviews avoid peremptory statements. Helpful reviews provide justifications for particular statements and link declarative statements with detailed reason giving. The concept of helpfulness is closely connected to the concept of fairness. (Turner, 2003, p. 186)

To these statements, we would amplify the importance of referees avoiding any hint of ‘aggression’ towards authors, and rather call on them (and us, as editors) to adopt a spirit of constructive criticism and rigorous generosity, even when it is felt essential to highlight limitations of a submission’s content, argument and treatment of relevant literatures.

Of the remaining three principles, we will ensure as far as possible that selected reviewers are Appropriate, with good knowledge of and interest in the subject matters of submissions, and that submissions are passed through the review system in as Timely a fashion as feasible, recognising that reviewers are themselves often under extreme work pressure and, of course, that refereeing is an unpaid, largely unseen, relatively thankless process. In this latter regard, we would encourage authors who feel that they have genuinely benefitted from the insights of reviewers to acknowledge that assistance in their published pieces. Turner’s fifth principle, Identifiable, the proposal that authors and reviewers should be ‘identifiable’ to each other (not anonymised), is more problematic for us. Indeed, we acknowledge that the new editors hold different views here, some agreeing with Turner and others with Corlett (2004), who voices reservations about removing the anonymity of reviewers and thereby creating a potentially conflictual contact zone between author and reviewer that cannot be managed by journal editors. The SGJ’s established practice is ‘blind review’, and for the moment at least we intend to retain that practice, but with the caveat that authors and/or reviewers who are happy explicitly to relinquish their anonymity at any stage in the process should be at liberty to do so (for instance, if a reviewer wishes to self-acknowledge their own personal stake in the field covered by a particular paper). Going forward, we are entirely open to further dialogue about this matter with interested parties.

The new Editorial Team indeed wishes to encourage a wide variety of possible forms and formats of contribution to the SGJ. Moreover, we would invite authors to liaise with us in advance if they have their own distinctive ideas for what a contribution might entail and look like, and we are hoping that there are readers who will be intrigued by one or more of the suggestions below and hence be proactive in contacting us with their own proposals. A full list of possible forms and formats of contribution will follow after the present paragraph, and note that the word counts allocated to each one should be treated as merely advisory (not as diktat). Most contributions will still need to be submitted via the journal’s on-line submission platform (accessible via http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rsgj) and will be subject to academic review, but with reviewers being explicitly advised as to how they should be assessing pieces that are intended as non-standard submissions. It is possible that a few contributions might need to be submitted and entered into production via other routes arranged by the editors with the publisher. We wish to encourage contributions from both scholars working in the academy and people working in some way with geographical ideas, techniques, tools or sensibilities outwith the academy, as will be clear from our reference to ‘Applied Geographies’ below. And, further, we wish to encourage contributions from academics at all career stages, from the most senior of professors (including those of Emeritus status) to the starting-off Doctoral or Masters student, and we could also envisage publishing papers based on the work of undergraduate students (maybe dissertation projects reworked with the assistance of staff supervisors). We would like the SGJ to be recognised as a useful, approachable and supportive ‘testing ground’ for individuals aiming for their first publications.

• Standard Academic Papers (c.6000–8000 words). Our ‘bread-and-butter’ is likely to remain the standard academic paper submitted by academic, professional or independent-scholar geographers, but, to underline, it can address – within certain bounds of reason – any geographical subject-matter from any theoretical position and deploying any methodological approach.

• Position Papers (c. 1000–2000 words), entailing short, pithy, polemical statements about academic subfields, concepts, methods, ethics, practices, politics of (and beyond) the academy, and more;

• ExPosition Papers (up to 20,000 words), which we intend as a particularly distinctive feature of the SGJ, notably in a journal-publishing universe where so much stress is created by the word-count police, allowing authors to write at length, substantively, conceptually or in critical-review mode, in a manner rarely possible elsewhere;

• Contributions (c.1000–2000 words, but could be more) to the long-standing Scottish Landforms Examples (SLaX [previously SLEx]) Series, which first appeared in 1991 alongside the original guidance as to what a contribution to the series should entail. On this count, we wish to offer our deepest thanks to Dave Evans (Durham) for his sterling work for a staggering 31 years – nearly as long as Newbigin was overall Editor! – as SLaX Series Editor ever since its inception (Evans & Hansom, 1991; also Evans, 2004). We also note that from now on this editorial work will be taken into the Editorial Team under the auspices of Martin Hurst and Rhian Thomas. Revised guidelines for the SLaX Series are provided below in Appendix 1.

• Contributions (c.1000–2000 words, but could be more) to an entirely new Scottish Locales Examples (SLoX) Series, designed to comprise a human geography-facing parallel to the above-mentioned SLaX Series. This series will be led and edited by Emma Laurie, and our first ‘go’ at guidelines for the SLoX Series is provided below in Appendix 2. It might be underlined that our proposals for these twin series are closely interwoven with our broader vision for the journal, as detailed above, serving to cement and celebrate the importantly placed, Scottish, character of the SGJ. That said, we expect contributors to both series to be drawing on ideas, methods and insights, and drawing out implications both academic and worldly, transcendent of the Scottish situatedness of the landscapes and locales in question.

• Applied Geographies contributions (c.1000–2000 words) from independent scholars, policy-makers, professional practitioners, artists and ‘creatives’, advocates and activists and other ‘voices’ beyond the normal territory of the academy;

• Teaching Geographies contributions (c.1000–2000 words, but could also be full papers) from university staff, school-teachers or others discussing school-level geography (in any of its aspects) or providing capsular accounts of geographical subject-matters potentially of value to school-level geography students taking (in Scotland) Advanced Higher Geography programmes (an initiative that will be explicitly linked to the Education Committee of the RSGS);

• SGJ Archival Reviews (potentially short or much longer) based on the extensive ‘back issues’ archive of the SGJ which is now easily accessible and searchable from the journal website (e.g. a critical reappraisal of what these back issues tell us about Scottish geographers’ involvement in empire/the colonies; e.g. a critical reappraisal of what they tell us about Scotland’s contribution to glacial and Quaternary science);

• Extended Book Review Essays (maybe of clusters of books) (c.2000–6000 words). We have decided to discontinue standard book reviews, gradually phasing them out over the next year once extant commissioned reviews have appeared, given that there is such arbitrariness about what we receive from publishers (and increasingly there is no automatic pass-on of review copies) and with respect to which reviewers are able to complete the task. Alternatively, though, longer book review essays, based on single or maybe clusters of books, strike us as an attractive option for making serious contributions to our disciplinary literatures: an example of what we might like to receive would be the reviews offered in an outlet such as the London Review of Books (see https://www.lrb.co.uk).

Finally, as part of the journal ‘refresh’ – although we admit more by happy coincidence than design – the cover of the journal, for hard copy issues but also as shown on the journal website (see https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/rsgj20), has been revised. Artist and author Nick Hayes was commissioned by the RSGS to undertake this role, reflecting an impressive body of graphic illustration, lino-cuts and more (see https://folioart.co.uk/illustrator/nick-hayes) that resonates at many points with the concerns of geographers. Indeed, his attention to physical landscapes (especially fields, trees, forests), seascapes and townscapes, to animals real and fantastic (as well as ‘rewilding’), to spaces of ‘trespass’ (set against the ‘divisions’ of property and land-ownership that encroach upon the commons: Hayes, 2020) and to the likes of the Calais Refugee Camp or ‘Jungle’ (see https://urbansketchers.org/2016/05/19/calais-inside-refugee-camp-through-eye/) immediately calls out to geographers of many different stripes. Mike Robinson, Director of the RSGS, provides an eloquent account of this new cover illustration from Nick Hayes (see Figure 1), and it is with his words that we now conclude our Editorial:

Geography provides such a broad canvas on which to describe the world, whether in words, graphs, maps or diagrams. We wanted to do justice to this breadth of topic, and represent it better on the cover of the SGJ, to give it a more distinct identity, to modernise the feel of the journal and to add interest and vibrancy. But how? Working with artist Nick Hayes, who specialises in lino-cut images, we asked him to create an image which evoked the diverse landscapes of Scotland and aspects of geography. We asked for an image to replace the previous rectangular ‘block’, perhaps inspired by the linear art works that are often used to depict places – especially cities – a stretched panorama of distinct landmarks. However, we wanted it in a vertical pattern to make the most of the journal’s layout. Nick has done a wonderful job of pulling this all together into a single cohesive image and his lino-cut style brings a real power to everything from the weather and sky at the top of the image to the urban, cultural and industrial references at the bottom and the forests, loch, rivers and buildings in between. The RSGS has undergone a significant modernisation over the past few years, and with a dynamic new Editorial Team at the University of Glasgow assuming responsibility for the SGJ looking to invigorate the content, we wanted to take this opportunity to refresh the external appearance too. (Robinson, Personal communication (e-mail to Editors of the SGJ, April 13, 2022))

Figure 1. New cover of the Scottish Geographical Journal.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to John Agnew, from the Editorial Board, and John Briggs, current Chair of the RSGS Trustees, for casting their eyes over drafts of this Editorial, confirming that it is fit for purpose and offering a few suggestions for its improvement.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Tellingly perhaps, from 2016 this journal has been renamed the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, presumably to indicate greater inclusivity of who can be a member of the Association and perhaps also to limit the sense of it being a ‘regional geography’ journal.

2

Of more significance than the increase in its circulation is the position which the Magazine has gained among the geographical publications of the world. The range of topics discussed in its pages is now much greater than in the early days, and papers are submitted to the Editor from an ever-widening circle of geographers in almost every English-speaking country in the world, and in greater numbers than the limits of space can accommodate. (Anon., 1934b, p. 37)

These remarks run somewhat counter to Agnew’s claims, prompting perhaps the need for a more sustained investigation of the matter.

3 The back story of the ‘unofficial founding of the Society’ runs as follows:

This was a gathering of friends at the home of Mr. and Mrs. A. L. Bruce at North Berwick, recently commemorated by a garden party held on July 20, 1934, by the Lord Provost, Magistrates and Council of the City of Edinburgh for the benefit of the members. Mrs. A.L. Bruce, it is perhaps unnecessary to recall, was the daughter of David Livingstone, and the meeting referred to, while not intended to be more than a social gathering of those who, like its hostess, had a common interest in world travel and geography, became the occasion of suggesting that some corporate body be formed. The Society has in its possession a silver match-box, bearing the date July 20, 1884, which was presented by Mrs. Bruce to Mr. J.G. Bartholomew as a memento of his originating the idea of a Scottish Geographical Society. (Newbigin, 1934, p. 259)

4 Oddly, one of the editors once explored the role that a ‘house journal’, the Asylum Journal (which subsequently became the Asylum Journal of Mental Science and eventually the British Journal of Psychiatry) played in knitting together the dispersed membership of its parent organisation, the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane, many of whom were extremely spatially isolated from one another as medical superintendents based in often rural and remote lunatic asylums of different kinds (Philo, 1994). A not dissimilar analysis could be turned back upon the SGM, certainly in its earliest years.

5 Another volume taking the temperature, as we might say, of ‘Scottish geographical studies’ just over a century after the birth of both Society and Magazine is Dawson et al. (1993).

6

By tragic coincidence, on July 20th, the same day as the Society commenced the celebration of its 50th Anniversary, the death took place of Dr. Marion Isabel Newbigin, Editor of this Magazine for over 32 years. It is a fitting close to so long a period of distinguished service that the Editorial and the whole contents of this Number, except certain notices, were prepared by her for publication before her death. (Prefatory remarks inserted at the head of Newbigin, 1934, p. 257)

7

No one has exerted a better influence on the modern student. Not the least important vehicle of this influence has been the Scottish Geographical Magazine. It is not meet that the pages of this periodical should extol its own value, but it may be permitted to remark that no British geographical organ is more indispensable in the libraries of geographical schools and institutions, and none has given greater encouragement to serious workers in geography. The Magazine owes this, and much that it implies, to its late editor. Many of its contributors owe her no less; advice, criticism, even textual improvements in their articles. (Anon., 1934a, p. 333)

8 It appears that the SGM appeared monthly, with twelve issues or numbers a year, from 1885 (Vol.1) through the First World War until 1918 (Vol.34); 1919 (Vol.35) comprised 10 issues; 1920 (Vol.36) until 1923 (Vol.39) comprised 4 issues annually; 1924 (Vol.40) until 1939 (Vol.55) comprised 6 issues annually; 1940 (Vol.56) through the Second World War, excepting 1943–1944 which were combined as ‘one year’, until 1998 (Vol.114) comprised 3 issues annually; 1999 (Vol.115) through to the present have comprised 4 issues annually but on various occasions, particularly recently, issues have combined into single entities virtually and in hard copy. ‘[T]he Scottish Geographical Magazine has appeared continuously since its first issue at the end of February 1885 to the present time,’ wrote Newbigin (1934, p. 260) in the Society’s half-centenary edition, but added ‘[i]t is true that in the war and post-war period it has not been possible to maintain the monthly issue.’

9 As Allan Findlay says, ‘I tried to achieve a number of things such as the change of name’ (Findlay, Personal communication (e-mail to Editors of the SGJ, April 25, 2022)).

10 Stanley elaborated that his scheme had been taken up with enthusiasm by Leopold II, King of the Belgians, an aspect of what has been called Stanley’s ‘mercenary’ willingness to support the capitalist-colonialist-imperialist ambitions of any national power, something that did not always go down well with British subjects (and geographers) (Driver, 1991). Leopold II, moreover, was installed as one of the very first Honorary Members of the Scottish Geographical Society (Anon, 1885b). In a delicious small slice of what might be termed ‘post-colonial’ speaking back, a paper in the SGM 50 years ago – advancing a critical perspective on the ‘social distance’ separating European colonial administrators from ‘the African masses’ in tropical Africa – complained that ‘[t]he combined effects of taxation and land ownership can be seen at their worst in the early days of Leopold II's rule of the “Belgian Congo”’ (Tiwari, 1972, p. 210). Tiwari appears to be a scholar with an Indian background who has written on both the geography of India and settlement geography.

Appendices

Appendix 1. Scottish Landforms Examples

Scottish Landforms Examples (SLaX [ex-SLEx]) is a long-standing series, integrated within the SGJ, first appearing in 1991 with the aim of presenting and explaining exemplar Scottish landforms in an approachable way for anyone with an interest in the physical geography of Scotland. As part of our new vision for the SGJ, we will uphold SLaX as an ideal vehicle for celebrating the Scottish character of the SGJ, with both local insights and universal relevance.

Reworking the original aims of the series as appended to Evans and Hansom (1991, p. 66), contributions to SLaX can address a diversity of Scottish landforms, broadly defined, and chiming with topics drawn from all areas of physical geography. Such landforms may encompass a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, potentially covering terrestrial, freshwater or marine environments. SLaX offers an exciting and flexible way to contribute ideas, methods, new techniques in dating, surveying, mapping and modelling to a broad audience that may include advanced school level and university students, academics and practitioners. Visual aids, particularly those exploiting state-of-the-art 3D surveying and visualisation techniques, will be encouraged wherever possible.

Contributions and any enquiries should be directed to either of the SLaX series editors, Martin Hurst or Rhian Thomas. We would like to express our sincerest thanks to Dave Evans, the series’ previous editor, for 31 years of incredible service since its inception.

Appendix 2. Scottish Locales Examples

For over 30 years, the SGM/SGJ has given over space to a particular form of place-writing through the above-described series, established to provide ‘summary accounts … of both familiar and more obscure [Scottish] landforms … for those interested in physical geography’ (Evans & Hansom, 1991, p. 66). Taking inspiration from that series, we now launch a parallel Scottish Locales Examples (SLoX) intended as a new outlet for the disciplinary tradition of place-writing, but now with a distinctly human geography flavour.

SLoX echoes the aims of SLaX, in our openness to contributions that cover different scales, sites, subjects and styles. Writing can hone in on a nook or cranny, focus on a single building, or extend out to an tell a story of an entire city or landscape. The subject can be spectacular or banal; the site – to borrow from SLaX – can be ‘familiar’ or ‘obscure’. Writing can be dedicated to a place that once was, a place in-flux, contested, decaying, or becoming. Stylistically, we are open to contributions that adopt a more ‘traditional’ place-writing akin to regional geography, as well as to contributions providing art-based experimental (non)writings of place, from thickly layered reconstructions to lively story-telling that seeks to captures the personality of a place. SLoX can capture a place in brevity or in deep biographical detail and represent it in prose, poetry, photography and maybe more. As Lorimer (2019, p. 333) notes in his call for a renewal of the ‘place-writing tradition in Geography,’ place-writing reveals how ‘careful fusion of chosen site, subject matter and prose style can speak a language of locality, and at once reset the wider representational project by which geographers present their proprietary feelings about place, its presumed fate and possible prospects.’

Contributions and any enquires should be directed to SLoX series editor Emma Laurie.