Twenty years of Tourism Geographies: a bibliometric overview

Abstract

Tourism Geographies is a prominently ranked journal that emerged from activities of the Tourism Commission of the International Geographical Union. It is indexed in the ‘Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management’ and ‘Geography, Planning and Development’ fields in the Scopus database and published its 20th volume in 2018. A bibliometric assessment of the articles and authors who have contributed to Tourism Geographies over its first two decades highlights major trends and dominant issues covered by the journal’s content. Key indicators include the most published and most cited authors and articles, the institutions and countries that those authors are affiliated with, other academic journals that are closely linked to the journal through citations, and the most used keywords in the journal. The Scopus database provides access to these basic bibliometric data, while the VOSviewer software enables graphical analyses and displays of co-citations, co-occurrences of keywords, and bibliographic couplings (shared references) across papers and authors. Overall, Tourism Geographies is closely linked to other leading journals indexed by Scopus in the ‘Tourism’ and ‘Geography’ fields and publishes papers from around the world. Research topics that have been most prominent in the journal include tourism development, tourist destinations, tourist attractions, heritage tourism, tourism perceptions, sustainable tourism, and travel behavior. Among the most viewed individual papers have been those addressing issues related to sustainability, poverty issues (related to tourism in poor areas, volunteering, sustainable tourism, and the environment), and community planning (sustainable tourism planning, tourist routes and movement, and new locations for tourism development).

摘要

《旅游地理》是一本发端于国际地理联合会旅游委员会学术活动的业内顶级期刊。它被收录在Scopus数据库中的”旅游、休闲与酒店管理”和”地理、规划与发展”领域, 至2018年已出版到第20卷。本文采用文献计量法评价了《旅游地理》第一个20年中作出贡献的文章和作者, 突出了该期刊内容涵盖的主要趋势和议题。主要指标包括发表数最多和引用量最多的作者和文章、这些作者所属的机构和国家、引文中与该期刊密切相关的其他学术期刊以及该期刊中使用最多的关键词。Scopus数据库为我们提供了这些文献计量的数据, 而VOSviewer软件的使用能够对论文和作者之间的共引、关键字的共现和文献耦合（共享相同参考文献）进行图形分析和显示。总体而言, 《旅游地理》与其他收录在Scopus数据库中的”旅游”和”地理”领域的顶级期刊联系密切。并且, 《旅游地理》已经发表了来自世界各地的多篇文章。该杂志最突出的研究主题包括旅游开发、旅游目的地、旅游吸引物、遗产旅游、旅游感知、可持续旅游和旅游行为。其中, 最受欢迎的论文往往涉及可持续性、贫困（贫困地区旅游业、志愿服务、可持续旅游和环境相关议题）和社区规划（可持续旅游规划、旅游线路和移动性, 旅游开发新地标）议题。

Keywords:

• Tourism Geographies
• bibliometrics
• Scopus database
• VOSviewer
• citation structure
• journal ranking
• author ranking

关键词:

• 旅游地理
• 文献计量学
• Scopus数据库
• VOSviewer
• 引文结构
• 期刊排名
• 作者排名。

Introduction

Tourism Geographies is a scholarly journal, published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis, which explores tourism and tourism-related areas of recreation and leisure studies from a geographic perspective. The journal grew out of publication efforts by the Tourism Commission of the International Geographical Union (IGU) and was founded by Alan A. Lew (Northern Arizona University, USA), who has been the chief editor since its first issue was published in February 1999. He has worked closely with founding co-editors C. Michael Hall (University of Canterbury, New Zealand), Shaul Krakover (Ben-Gurion University – Negev, Israel), and Allan M. Williams (University of Surrey, UK), and with new co-editors Honggang Xu (Sun Yat-Sen University, China) and Jarkko Saarinen (University of Oulu, Finland and University of Johannesburg, South Africa). Prompted mostly be academics in Africa, the editors applied for listing in the Web of Science Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) in 2002 and was in the first crop of new tourism journals to be accepted into SSCI in 2008, receiving its first SSCI Journal Citations Reports (JCR) two-year impact factor in 2011.

As both the Scopus (Elsevier) and Web of Science databases reveal, Tourism Geographies is among of the more recognized academic journals in the tourism, geography and hospitality fields. Additionally, looking beyond these two sources, it is also indexed in most other databases, such as CABI Publishing, Zeller Verlag (IBZ/IBR), Ebsco, Geographical Abstracts, IBSS International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, Google Scholar, and Tourism Abstracts. The 2018 JCR impact factor (published in 2019) for Tourism Geographies was 2.747, occupying the 14th position out of the 52 ‘Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism’ category journals tracked by Clarivate Analytics. Additionally, according to the Scimago Journal Rank (SJR), its impact factor is 1.202, reaching the 12th position out of 101 journals in the ‘Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management’ field, and the 60th out of 699 journals in the ‘Geography, Planning and Development’ field.

Since its inception, Tourism Geographies has published one volume per year, consisting of four issues. Since 2014 the number of issues published has been five a year, and it scheduled to publish six issue a year in 2021. The 20th volume of Tourism Geographies was published in 2018, which was celebrated through a series of editorial commentaries by many of its editorial board members from around the world. This event also marked an appropriate time for bibliometric analysis of 20 years of content in Tourism Geographies. Such an analysis can provide three major insights. The first is to give a complete description of the global academic structure of the journal, including the citation structure, publishing evolution and the most cited papers. The second insight is seen in the influence of the journal through the most prominent authors that have published in Tourism Geographies and their institutions and countries. Finally, the third insight is to show the scholarly impact of the journal in the ‘Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management’ field, through the main topics and subject matter of articles published since its inception.

The analysis uses the Scopus database to collect bibliographic material, which is then graphically mapped using the VOSviewer software (Van Eck & Waltman, 2010). Bibliometric techniques include co-citation and the co-occurrence of author keywords. The Scopus database is larger and more complete, covering every volume and paper in Tourism Geographies’ long history, whereas the Web of Science database only includes information from 2007 onwards and includes fewer journal sources.

A bibliometric analysis of this type contributes to the growing literature of papers that summarize trends and achievement of journals over major time periods (Davis, 2015; Meyer & Winer, 2014; Mulet-Forteza, Martorell-Cunill, Merigó, Genovart-Balaguer, and Mauleon-Méndez, 2018; Martorell-Cunill, Socias, Otero, and Mulet-Forteza, 2019). The term bibliometrics was introduced by Pritchard (1969) as ‘the application of mathematical and statistical methods to books and other means of communication’. In the tourism and hospitality field, there are many examples of bibliometric studies. For example, García-Lillo, Úbeda-García, and Marco-Lajara, (2017) and Omerzel (2016) examined the most prominent journals in tourism, while McKercher (2008), Figueroa-Domecq, Pritchard, Segovia-Pérez, Morgan, and Villacé-Molinero (2015) and Mulet-Forteza, Genovart-Balaguer, Mauleon-Mendez, and Merigó (2019) focused on the number of publications by the most influential tourism authors. In addition, Ruhanen, Weiler, Moyle, and McLennan (2015) analyzed trends and patterns in the subfield of sustainable tourism, and Okumus, Köseoglu, Putra, Dogan, and Yildiz (2018) analyzed the evolution of research in the broader hospitality and tourism field between 1990 and 2016 in 16 leading journals.

Methodology

For this bibliometric study of Tourism Geographies, data was gathered in April 2019 from the Scopus database using “Tourism Geographies” as a keyword in the “publication name” field. The inquiry returned 829 documents, which dropped to 707 once the search was refined by limiting the information to articles published before December 31st, 2018 and applying a strict process of arbitration that only considered articles, reviews and academic notes in the total document count. This resulted in 89% of the total papers available by December 2018, which was estimated to be representative enough to engage in the analysis of the academic structure of the journal.

There is no consensus in the literature regarding which bibliographic methods are the best. The number of publications, for example, quantifies productivity (Ding, Rousseau, & Wolfram, 2014), while the number of citations generally measures influence (Svensson, 2010). Other indicators of productivity and influence include the ratio of ‘citations per document’, which measures the average impact of each article, and the h-index (Alonso, Cabrerizo, Herrera-Viedma, & Herrera, 2009; Hirsch, 2005). The latter measures the h number of documents published in a journal that have at least h citations, so that an h-5 score of 50 would mean that 50 of the articles published in the past 5 years in the journal have been cited at least 50 times each in the database. The h-index is one type of citation threshold (Merigó, Mas-Tur, Roig-Tierno, & Ribeiro-Soriano, 2015) for identifying the number of articles reaching a significant influence. Some other common bibliometrics include: the most productive authors, institutions and countries; the number of publications and citations per person; and the most influential keywords. For institutional analysis, general university rankings may also be included. Except for Table 10, which is sorted by journal impact factors, the results have been sorted by the total number of publications (TP). In case of a draw, a second level sort is based on the total citations (TC).

Table 10. Ranking of journals indexed in the ‘Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management’ field of the Scopus database, 2017.

R	Journal name	SJR IF	H	TP	TC	C/P	≥1000	≥500	≥250	≥100	≥ 50	≥ 25	≥ 10	≥ 5	≥ 1	Y
1	Tourism Management	3.027	154	3,135	130,824	41.7	–	9	51	335	780	1,412	2,123	2,509	2,937	1982
2	Journal of Travel Research	2.820	124	1,571	66,435	42.3	–	3	30	168	411	729	1,079	1,252	1,452	1969
3	Annals of Tourism Research	2.262	161	2,592	121,659	46.9	3	13	69	345	748	1,170	1,606	1,867	2,267	1973
4	J. of Hospitality and Tourism Research	2.150	54	1,102	15,367	13.9	–	–	–	20	65	183	410	593	860	1976
5	Int’l. Journal of Hospitality Management	2.027	91	1,996	44,591	22.3	–	–	3	79	223	556	1,148	1,472	1,851	1982
6	Journal of Sustainable Tourism	1.543	84	1,051	31,256	29.7	–	–	4	66	189	401	671	832	1,005	1993
7	Journal of Service Management	1.488	95	744	36,015	48.4	–	2	20	93	226	366	534	608	701	1990
8	Current Issues in Tourism	1.474	53	789	13,214	16.7	–	–	1	12	58	154	370	559	751	1998
9	Int’l. J. of Contemporary Hospitality Mgmt.	1.452	64	1,601	28,739	18.0	–	–	3	23	123	356	817	1,121	1,481	1989
10	Applied Geography	1.319	74	1,958	35,036	17.9	–	–	4	39	153	414	973	1,373	1,833	1981
11	International Journal of Tourism Research	1.315	39	518	7,352	14.2	–	–	–	1	23	96	244	348	483	2008
12	Tourism Geographies	1.202	48	634	11,227	17.7	–	–	2	8	45	143	315	419	542	1999
13	Cornell Hospitality Quarterly	1.198	69	2,713	27,751	10.2	–	–	3	38	126	308	686	1,051	1,751	1960
14	J. of Hospitality Marketing and Mgmt.	1.160	27	342	3,671	10.7	–	–	–	1	9	29	126	212	320	2010
15	Sport Management Review	1.159	41	487	7,599	15.6	–	–	1	6	30	98	229	311	423	1998
16	Cities	1.110	67	1,884	28,059	14.9	–	1	2	30	123	333	748	1,123	1,657	1983
17	J. of Hospitality & Tourism Management	0.949	23	265	1,908	7.2	–	–	–	–	3	16	61	111	227	2006
18	Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing	0.940	58	1,198	19,997	16.7	–	1	1	11	77	244	593	817	1,107	1992
19	Journal of Vacation Marketing	0.875	52	662	12,608	19.0	–	–	1	17	62	178	323	427	567	1994
20	Leisure Studies	0.865	60	929	16,168	17.4	–	–	–	20	83	202	434	609	845	1981
21	Tourism Management Perspectives	0.842	24	370	2,835	7.7	–	–	–	1	6	24	76	176	314	2012
22	European Sport Management Quarterly	0.797	22	217	1,920	8.8	–	–	–	–	1	17	74	114	189	2010
23	Space and Culture	0.776	29	554	4,247	7.7	–	–	–	2	10	42	135	218	412	1997
24	Res. in Transportation Business & Mgmt.	0.776	19	280	1,825	6.5	–	–	–	–	–	11	66	139	248	2011
25	Int’l. J. of Retail & Distribution Mgmt.	0.742	64	1,427	25,531	17.9	–	–	3	24	103	333	702	944	1,228	1990
26	International Journal of Sport Policy	0.708	20	249	1,781	7.2	–	–	–	–	2	12	61	114	206	2010
27	Tourism Economics	0.665	48	985	11,033	11.2	–	–	1	9	46	112	301	508	866	1995
28	Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research	0.636	27	656	4,808	7.3	–	–	–	–	3	37	169	319	561	2003
29	Leisure Sciences	0.607	72	1,024	24,983	24.4	–	–	7	45	130	310	571	724	920	1977
30	Tourist Studies	0.603	41	283	6,155	21.7	–	1	2	8	31	61	137	187	248	2001
31	Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change	0.572	20	257	1,876	7.3	–	–	–	–	5	17	60	107	219	2003
32	Journal of China Tourism Research	0.572	15	247	1,226	5.0	–	–	–	–	–	3	39	101	199	2008
33	J. of Hosp., Leisure, Sports & Tourism Ed.	0.571	19	238	1,499	6.3	–	–	–	–	3	8	50	98	198	2008
34	Journal of Ecotourism	0.563	30	243	3,239	13.3	–	–	–	1	13	37	101	151	222	2002
35	Tourism Planning & Development	0.553	22	361	2,578	7.1	–	–	–	–	4	20	81	164	306	2004
36	Scandinavian J. of Hospitality & Tourism	0.528	34	388	4,753	12.3	–	–	–	2	13	54	152	232	341	2001
37	Annals of Leisure Research	0.528	15	273	1,235	4.5	–	–	–	–	–	5	29	94	233	2008
38	Tourism and Hospitality Research	0.527	31	313	3,380	10.8	–	–	–	–	12	36	104	173	268	2004
39	Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology	0.520	18	148	1,165	7.9	–	–	–	–	1	10	41	70	123	2010
40	International Journal of Tourism Cities	0.502	3	51	42	0.8	–	–	–	–	–	–	1	2	16	2015
41	J. of Human Resources in Hosp. & Tourism	0.495	19	292	1,676	5.7	–	–	–	–	–	8	51	118	261	2002
42	Int’l. J. of Hospitality & Tourism Administration	0.493	23	385	2,830	7.4	–	–	–	1	5	20	96	182	321	2000
43	Journal of Leisure Research	0.476	67	762	20,789	27.3	–	–	2	32	116	288	490	600	724	1978
44	Tourism Analysis	0.474	28	790	4,727	6.0	–	–	–	2	8	33	137	309	620	2001

Source: Authors, compiled from Scimago Journal Rank Impact Factor ranking for citations in the years 2016 and 2017, and the Scopus database.

See Appendix for the full table of 88 journals.

Abbreviations: R = Rank based on SJR IF covering years 2016 and 2017; SJR IF = Scimago Journal Rank Impact Factor in 2017; TP = Total papers; TC = Total citations; H = h-index of author’s papers in Tourism Geographies; C/P = citations per paper published in Tourism Geographies; 1000, ≥ 500, ≥ 250, ≥ 100, ≥ 50, ≥ 25, ≥ 10, ≥ 5, ≥ 1 = Number of papers with at least 1000, 500, 250, 100, 50, 25, 10, 5 and 1 citations, respectively; Y = Year that was introduced in Scopus.

As noted above, graphic mapping of the bibliographic data using VOSviewer software examines the co-occurrence of author keywords and co-citations (Kessler, 1963; Sinkovics, 2016). A co-citation is produced when two documents receive a citation from the same third document (Small, 1973).

The combination of methods used in the collection of information from the Scopus database, along with the use of VOSviewer software, allows us to compilate information under both the “full counting” and “fractional counting” techniques. The “full counting” method focusses on the authors so that a paper with two authors will be counted twice, once for each author (Mulet-Forteza et al., 2019). The “fractional counting” method splits the paper among the authors so that a paper with two authors will only count as half a paper for each author.

The overall structure of Tourism Geographies

The 707 documents examined (articles, reviews, and academic notes only published from 1999 through 2018) received a total of 12,657 citations as of April 2019, resulting in a citation per document ratio of 18. As of April 2019, according to the Scopus database, the h-index of the journal was 52, which indicates that there were 52 documents published in the time period that had obtained a threshold of at least 52 citations through that month.

Figure 1 shows how Tourism Geographies has increased, with some exceptions, the number of documents it publishes annually since its inception. This number is driven by (1) publisher limits on the number of pages allowed each year, (2) editorial limits on the number of words allowed per paper, and (3) the physical size of the journal’s pages, with larger pages allowing more words and articles.

Figure 1. Annual number of documents published in Tourism Geographies. (Source: Authors, compiled from Scopus database).

During its first year in 1999, Tourism Geographies published 40 documents, most of which came from the IGU publication efforts noted above. This gave the journal a strong first year inaugural volume. That number dropped to the mid to low 20s for subsequent years through 2007 as the journal sought to establish itself and obtain SSCI status. Inclusion in the SSCI database in 2008 resulted in a significant increase in the number of manuscripts received and a relatively steady increase in those published. A peak of 52 papers was reached in 2017, then jumping to 80 papers in 2018, an accumulation of moving to five issues per year, an increase in the physical dimensions of the printed pages, and the publisher becoming more flexible in the number of pages allowed per volume/year. This higher number is likely to continue into the future, especially when the journal moves to six issue per year in 2021.

Table 1 shows the evolution of Tourism Geographies citations with six citation categories. In general, older articles have time to be cited more than recent articles. For Tourism Geographies, the numbers of citations per volume, as of April 2019, has been roughly similar for most years, ranging between 600 and 800. Those values slightly diminished between 2010 and 2012, with between 500 and 600 citations. Overall, 96% of the manuscripts published in Tourism Geographies have at least one or more citations, and 1% reached the threshold of 100 citations or more.

Table 1. Annual citation in Tourism Geographies.

Year	TP	TC	>100	>50	>25	>10	>5	>1
1999	40	769	1	2	7	14	21	28
2000	27	1,397	5	7	18	21	21	22
2001	27	831	2	4	10	21	23	25
2002	27	697	–	7	11	16	21	22
2003	29	977	1	6	13	19	22	26
2004	24	609	–	3	8	18	20	22
2005	23	682	2	4	10	18	20	20
2006	23	658	–	4	11	16	20	21
2007	21	781	–	5	13	20	20	21
2008	24	710	1	2	11	23	24	24
2009	31	678	1	4	10	20	23	29
2010	34	509	–	–	8	20	26	28
2011	40	540	–	1	8	20	23	33
2012	36	598	–	1	10	20	24	29
2013	45	732	–	1	14	24	30	34
2014	50	705	–	1	7	27	45	50
2015	43	358	–	–	2	13	29	43
2016	31	205	–	–	1	5	18	31
2017	52	144	–	–	–	1	9	40
2018	80	77	–	–	–	–	2	36
TOTAL	707	12,657	13	52	172	336	441	584
%			1.8%	7.4%	24.3%	47.5%	62.4%	82.6%

Source: Authors, compiled from Scopus database.

Abbreviations: TP = Total papers; TC = Total citations; 100, ≥ 50, ≥ 25, ≥ 10, ≥ 5, ≥ 1 = Number of papers with at least 100, 50, 25, 10, 5 and 1 citations, respectively.

The year 2000 volume, however, received a much higher number of citations, with greater citation ratios per manuscript. In particular, in that year five manuscripts reached the over the 100 citations threshold, the most prominent being “Tourism and migration: New relationships between production and consumption” by Williams and Hall (2000) with 278 citations. In 2000, there were also seven manuscripts with more than 50 citations and 18 with more than 25 citations. Another year/volume with a high number of citations is 2003 with 977. The decline in citation numbers from 2015 onwards is logical since the most recent publications have not had enough time to reach their citation potential. With the recent major increase in published manuscripts, a significant increase in the annual number of citations is expected in coming years.

The most cited and viewed papers in Tourism Geographies

Table 2 shows the ranking of the 50 most cited articles in Tourism Geographies through April 2019. Additionally, the table also shows the year of publication of the document and the number of citations per year (C/Y).

Table 2. The 50 most cited paper in Tourism Geographies, 1999–2019.*

R	Authors	Title	Year	TC	C/Y	Views	V/Y	R*
1	Butler R.W.	Sustainable tourism: A state-of-the-art review	1999	384	19.2	23,354	1,946	1
2	Williams A.M., Hall C.M.	Tourism and migration: New relationships between production and consumption	2000	270	14.2	406	45	436
3	Jenkins O.H.	Photography and travel brochures: The circle of representation	2003	243	15.2	5,179	575	12
4	Milne S., Ateljevic I.	Tourism, economic development and the global-local nexus: Theory embracing complexity	2001	220	12.2	11,960	1,329	2
5	Bell M., Ward G.	Comparing temporary mobility with permanent migration	2000	158	8.3	264	29	549
6	Williams A.M., King R., Warnes A., Patterson G.	Tourism and international retirement migration: New forms of an old relationship in southern Europe	2000	131	6.9	3,442	382	21
7	De Bres K., Davis J.	Celebrating group and place identity: A case study of a new regional festival	2001	121	6.7	2,051	228	50
8	Scheyvens R., Momsen J.H.	Tourism and poverty reduction: Issues for small island states	2008	109	9.9	4,082	408	13
9	Carmichael B.A.	Understanding the wine tourism experience for winery visitors in the Niagara region, Ontario, Canada	2005	107	7.6	1,782	198	65
10	Bianchi R.V.	The 'critical turn' in tourism studies: A radical critique	2009	106	10.6	9,321	1,165	3
11	Smith A.	Conceptualizing city image change: The 're-imaging' of Barcelona	2005	104	7.4	3,618	302	19
12	Light D.	Gazing on communism: Heritage tourism and postcommunist identities in Germany, Hungary, and Romania	2000	104	5.5	1,604	178	75
13	Telfer D.J., Wall G.	Strengthening backward economic linkages: Local food purchasing by three Indonesian hotels	2000	101	5.3	680	76	268
14	Pritchard A., Morgan N.J.	Constructing tourism landscapes – gender, sexuality, and space	2000	101	5.3	1,638	182	73
15	McKercher B., Lau G.	Movement patterns of tourists within a destination	2008	97	8.8	1,942	194	53
16	Torres R.	Toward a better understanding of tourism and agriculture linkages in the Yucatan: Tourist food consumption and preferences	2002	97	5.7	951	106	163
17	Zhang J., Inbakaran R.J., Jackson M.S.	Understanding community attitudes towards tourism and host-guest interaction in the urban – Rural border region	2006	96	7.4	1,935	161	55
18	Ateljevic I.	Circuits of tourism: Stepping beyond the 'production/consumption' dichotomy	2000	96	5.1	751	83	241
19	Saxena G., Clark G., Oliver T., Ilbery B.	Conceptualizing integrated rural tourism	2007	95	7.9	1,417	129	88
20	Sørensen F.	The geographies of social networks and innovation in tourism	2007	94	7.8	1,296	118	105
21	Haldrup M.	Laid-back mobilities: Second-home holidays in time and space	2004	86	5.7	534	59	343
22	Wang D.	Tourist behavior and repeat visitation to Hong Kong	2004	85	5.7	1,392	155	93
23	McKercher B., Shoval N., Ng E., Birenboim A.	First and repeat visitor behavior: GPS Tracking and GIS Analysis in Hong Kong	2012	81	11.6	2,138	305	44
24	Hashimoto A., Telfer D.J.	Selling Canadian culinary tourism: Branding the global and the regional product	2006	80	6.2	7,667	639	5
25	Dredge D., Jenkins J.	Destination place identity and regional tourism policy	2003	78	4.9	2,034	226	51
26	Dann G.M.S., Steen Jacobsen J.K.	Tourism smellscapes	2003	78	4.9	724	80	249
27	Carl D., Kindon S., Smith K.	Tourists' experiences of film locations: New Zealand as 'Middle-Earth'	2007	74	6.2	3,273	298	24
28	Hernández-Lobato L., Solis-Radilla M.M., Moliner- Tena M.A., Sánchez-García J.	Tourism destination image, satisfaction and loyalty: A study in Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, Mexico	2006	71	5.5	1,377	115	96
29	Waitt G.	The Olympic spirit and civic boosterism: The Sydney 2000 Olympics	2001	71	3.9	1,111	123	134
30	Ioannides D., Petersen T.	Tourism 'nonentrepreneurship' in peripheral destinations: A case study of small and medium tourism enterprises on Bornholm, Denmark	2003	70	4.4	702	78	258
31	Nepal S.K., Chipeniuk R.	Mountain tourism: Toward a conceptual framework	2005	65	4.6	2,326	194	36
32	Nyaupane G.P., Chhetri N.	Vulnerability to climate change of nature-based tourism in the Nepalese Himalayas	2009	64	6.4	1,464	163	84
33	Preston-Whyte R.	Constructions of surfing space at Durban, South Africa	2002	64	3.8	398	44	444
34	Fletcher R.	Sustaining tourism, sustaining capitalism? The tourism industry’s role in global capitalist expansion	2011	63	7.9	1,962	280	52
35	Weaver A.	Spaces of containment and revenue capture: ‘Super-sized’ cruise ships as mobile tourism enclaves	2005	63	4.5	717	80	252
36	Truly D.	International retirement migration and tourism along the Lake Chapala Riviera: Developing a matrix of retirement migration behavior	2002	63	3.7	403	45	438
37	Paniagua A.	Urban-rural migration, tourism entrepreneurs, and rural restructuring in Spain	2002	60	3.5	620	69	294
38	Terkenli T.S.	Landscapes of tourism: Towards a global cultural economy of space?	2002	60	3.5	713	79	254
39	Marjavaara R.	The displacement myth: Second home tourism in the Stockholm archipelago	2007	59	4.9	551	50	332
40	Mostafanezhad M.	The Geography of compassion in volunteer tourism	2013	58	9.7	3,095	516	27
41	Awaritefe O.D.	Motivation and other considerations in tourist destination choice: A case study of Nigeria	2004	58	3.9	1,395	155	92
42	Visser G.	Gay men, tourism and urban space: Reflections on Africa’s ‘gay capital’	2003	57	3.6	791	88	222
43	Musa G.	Sipadan: A SCUBA-diving paradise: An analysis of tourism impact, diver satisfaction and tourism management	2002	57	3.4	848	94	202
44	Lew A.A.	Scale, change and resilience in community tourism planning	2014	56	11.2	2,064	344	47
45	Weaver D.	Asian ecotourism: Patterns and themes	2002	56	3.3	1,019	113	151
46	Boers B., Cottrell S.	Sustainable tourism infrastructure planning: A GIS-supported approach	2007	55	4.6	7,284	662	6
47	Rodriguez V.	Tourism as a recruiting post for retirement migration	2001	54	3.0	582	65	312
48	Quinn B.	Symbols, practices and myth-making: Cultural perspectives on the Wexford Festival Opera	2003	53	3.3	649	72	281
49	Wilkinson P.F.	Caribbean cruise tourism: Delusion? Illusion?	1999	53	2.7	934	104	171
50	Tucker H.	Recognizing emotion and its postcolonial potentialities: Discomfort and shame in a tourism encounter in Turkey	2009	52	5.2	1,632	204	74

Source: Authors, compiled from Scopus database.

Manuscripts = February 1999 through December 2018; Citations = 1999 through April 2019.

Abbreviations: TP = Total papers; TC = Total citations; C/Y = Citations per year; Views = total online views, 2010 to April 2019; V/Y = Online views per year, 2010 to April 2019; R* = Rank by number of citations.

The average number of citations per document for the 50 most cited papers is 95, with older papers having, in general, more citations than new papers. The four most cited papers exceed 200 citations, with the most cited being ‘Sustainable tourism: A state-of-the-art review’ by Butler (1999). In that paper, which was originally an IGU conference presentation, Butler analyses the confusion generated by the different definitions of the term sustainable tourism and the need to distinguish between sustainable tourism and tourism developed on the principles of sustainability. Fourteen documents in the table are over the 100 citations threshold.

In terms of citation per year (C/Y), the four most cited documents also occupy the first three positions in this ranking. Beyond those, however, the C/Y rankings do not directly correspond to the total number of citations. Three papers, in particular, stand out as having been published after the first 10 years and having high C/Y rates. These include: ‘The ‘critical turn’ in tourism studies: A radical critique’ by Bianchi (2009); ‘First and Repeat Visitor Behaviour: GPS Tracking and GIS Analysis in Hong Kong’ by McKercher, Shoval, Ng, and Birenboim (2012); and ‘Scale, change and resilience in community tourism planning’ by Lew (2014).

Due to the tendency of Table 2 to favor older papers over newer ones, 92% of the documents listed were published between 1999 and 2009. In addition, there are 81 authors represented in total in Table 2, of which only Irena Ateljevic, Bob Mckercher, and Allan M. Willians have two papers in that table. While not shown in Table 2, more recently published papers that show strong initial C/Y rates include: ‘Word of mouth and satisfaction in cruise port destinations’ by Satta, Parola, Penco and Persico (2015); ‘The use of tracking technologies in tourism research: the first decade’ by Shoval and Ahas (2016); ‘Tourism planning and place making: place-making or placemaking?’ by Lew (2017); and ‘Inclusive tourism development’ by Scheyvens and Biddulph (2018).

The number of online views that a document receives can be another element to analyze the influence and future potential of the papers published in an academic journal (Table 3). It might be expected that the most viewed documents are also the most cited ones, however, while Table 2 biases older documents, Table 3 tends to bias more recent documents because online viewing data has only been collected since 2010. Thus, the correlation between citations and views only holds true for a few of the documents, notable Butler (1999), Milne and Ateljevic (2001), and Bianchi (2009). Beyond those, most older papers have received far fewer views than newer papers. Table 3 adds papers that are not shown in Table 2 to create a list of the 50 articles that received the most online views from 2010 through April 2019. Sixteen of these top 50 papers are in Table 2 and the remaining 36 are in Table 3.

Table 3. The 50 most viewed online papers in Tourism Geographies, 2010 to April 2019 (combined with paper listed in Table 2).

R*	R	Authors	Title	Year	TC	C/Y	Views	V/Y
4	116	Swain M.B.	The cosmopolitan hope of tourism: Critical action and worldmaking vistas	2009	33	3.3	7,783	973
7	63	Sangkyun K., Long P., Robinson M.	Small screen, big tourism: The role of popular Korean television dramas in South Korean tourism	2009	48	4.8	6,231	779
8	104	Dyson P.	Slum Tourism: Representing and Interpreting 'Reality' in Dharavi, Mumbai	2012	36	5.1	5,664	809
9	76	Frenzel F., Koens K.	Slum Tourism: Developments in a Young Field of Interdisciplinary Tourism Research	2012	44	6.3	5,341	763
10	56	Lacher R.G., Nepal S.K.	From leakages to linkages: Local-level strategies for capturing tourism revenue in northern Thailand	2010	49	5.4	5,281	660
11	93	Markwell K., Waitt G.	Festivals, space and sexuality: Gay pride in Australia	2009	38	3.8	5,231	581
14	62	Graci S.	Collaboration and partnership development for sustainable tourism	2013	48	8.0	4,070	678
15	66	Steinbrink M.	‘We did the Slum!’ – Urban poverty tourism in historical perspective	2012	47	6.7	3,890	556
16	101	Park K., Reisinger Y.	Differences in the perceived influence of natural disasters and travel risk on international travel	2010	37	4.1	3,778	472
17	134	Torres-Delgado A., Saarinen J.	Using indicators to assess sustainable tourism development: A review	2014	28	5.6	3,705	618
18	91	Dovey K., King R.	Informal urbanism and the taste for slums	2012	38	5.4	3,668	524
20	92	Keese J.R.	The geography of volunteer tourism: Place matters	2011	38	4.8	3,581	512
22	239	Frisch T.	Glimpses of another world: The favela as a tourist attraction	2012	17	2.4	3,440	491
23	163	Popp M.	Positive and negative urban tourist crowding: Florence, Italy	2012	25	3.6	3,279	468
25	90	Duval D.T.	Critical issues in air transport and tourism	2013	38	6.3	3,267	545
26	620	Johnson P.A.	A quantitative methods primer for tourism research	2012	0	0.0	3,260	543
28	254	Lew A.A.	Tourism planning and place making: place-making or placemaking?	2017	15	7.5	2,974	1,487
29	98	Shaw G., Agarwal S., Bull P.	Tourism consumption and tourist behavior: A British perspective	2000	38	2.0	2,834	315
30	174	Lew A.A., Ng P.T., Ni C.-C., Wu T.-C.	Community sustainability and resilience: similarities, differences and indicators	2016	24	8.0	2,752	688
31	155	Scheyvens R., Russell M.	Tourism, land tenure and poverty alleviation in Fiji	2012	26	3.7	2,510	359
32	381	Jeuring J.H.G., Haartsen T.	The challenge of proximity: the (un)attractiveness of near-home tourism destinations	2017	7	3.5	2,432	811
33	479	Muzaini H.	Informal heritage-making at the Sarawak Cultural Village, East Malaysia	2017	3	1.5	2,409	803
34	220	Ward S., O'Regan T.	The film producer as the long-stay business tourist: Rethinking film and tourism from a gold coast perspective	2009	19	1.9	2,343	260
35	644	Cleave P.	Food and wine tourism: Integrating food, travel and territory	2011	0	0.0	2,334	333
37	68	Hollinshead K., Ateljevic I., Ali N.	Worldmaking agency-worldmaking authority: The sovereign constitutive role of tourism	2009	46	4.6	2,321	290
38	263	Ben-Dalia S., Collins-Kreiner N., Churchman A.	Evaluation of an urban tourism destination	2013	14	2.3	2,310	385
39	123	Everett S.	Production places or consumption spaces? The place-making agency of food tourism in Ireland and Scotland	2012	31	4.4	2,260	377
40	208	Lew A.A.	Tourism’s role in the global economy	2011	20	2.5	2,250	321
41	185	Avraham E., Ketter E.	Marketing destinations with prolonged negative images: Towards a theoretical model	2013	23	3.8	2,169	362
42	87	Rickly-Boyd J.M.	Existential authenticity: Place matters	2013	39	6.5	2,168	361
43	161	Duffy R.	Nature-based tourism and neoliberalism: concealing contradictions	2015	25	6.3	2,166	542
45	72	Crossley E.	Poor but happy: Volunteer tourists’ encounters with poverty	2012	45	6.4	2,132	305
46	121	Gibson C., Connell J.	Music, tourism and the transformation of Memphis	2007	32	2.7	2,092	190
47	44	Lew A.A.	Scale, change and resilience in community tourism planning	2014	56	11.2	2,064	344
48	490	Clavè S.A., Salamanca O.R., Rebollo J.F.V.	Tourism place: A discussion forum: Mass tourism development on the Mediterranean coast	2011	3	0.4	2,064	295
49	290	Ong L.T.J., Storey D., Minnery J.	Beyond the beach: Balancing environmental and socio-cultural sustainability in boracay, the Philippines	2011	12	1.5	2,056	294

Source: Authors, compiled from Scopus database.

*Of the 50 Tourism Geographies papers receiving the most online views, Table 2 lists 14 of them and the remaining 36 are listed here in Table 3.

Abbreviations: TP = Total papers; TC = Total citations; C/Y = Citations per year; Views = total online views, 2010 to April 2019; V/Y = Online views per year, 2010 to April 2019; R* = Rank by number of citations.

In total, there are 12 documents that received more than 5000 views. Among these, the most popular subjects are related to sustainability, touristic poverty (tourism in poor areas, volunteering, sustainable tourism, and the environment), and tourism planning (sustainable tourism planning, tourism routing, and new locations for development). In terms of the average views per year, the topical network relevance increases to include destination choice evaluation, along with subjects such as new business models, internationalization and culture.

There are 90 authors present in the 50 most viewed documents ranking. Among these, five authors have more than one document. The journal’s editor-in-chief, Alan A. Lew, has the most with four papers, reflecting his special role as the journal’s chief developer and administrator. The remaining four (Irena Ateljevic, Ross J. King, Sanjay K. Nepal, and Regina A. Scheyvens) each published two documents in this ranking.

The global reach of Tourism Geographies

The international influence of a journal can be reflected through an analysis of the authors, institutions, countries, and journals through which authors have cited documents published in Tourism Geographies. These tables show the social network and reach of the journal’s influence, although there is a bias towards individuals, institutions, and countries that are highly productive in the field of tourism studies overall.

Table 4 lists authors who have referenced Tourism Geographies articles in at least 15 of the articles they have published until December 31, 2018. C. Michael Hall is a co-editors for Tourism Geographies and is the author that cited the most documents published in the journal. He is also the most published author in the field of tourism studies. He is followed by Jarkko Saarinen, who is also a co-editor of the journal, and Melville Saayman (North-West University, South Africa). Many authors on this list hold post-graduate degrees in geography, followed by other social sciences.

Table 4. Authors citing the most articles from Tourism Geographies in all their published papers, 1999 to 2018.

Rank	Author	Total papers*
1	Hall, C.M.	40
2	Saarinen, J.	36
	Saayman, M.	36
4	Rogerson, C.M.	35
5	McKercher, B.	31
6	Wall, G.	23
	Butler, R.W.	23
8	Lee, C.K.	22
9	Hoogendoorn, G.	21
10	Coles, T.	20
	Kim, S.	20
	Woosnam, K.M.	20
	Xu, H.	20
14	Becken, S.	19
	Timothy, D.J.	19
	Visser, G.	19
17	Gössling, S.	17
	Rogerson, J.M.	17
	Shoval, N.	17
	Vanneste, D.	17
	Yang, Y.	17
22	Eusébio, C.	16
	Law, R.	16
	Nunkoo, R.	16
	Ryan, C.	16
26	Boley, B.B.	15
	Dredge, D.	15
	Hannam, K.	15
	Kline, C.	15
	Poria, Y.	15
	Waitt, G.	15
	Williams, A.M.	15

Source: Authors, compiled from Scopus database, 1999 to 2018.

*Papers by each author that cited Tourism Geographies articles in the full Scopus database.

See Appendix for full table.

Table 5 shows the institutions whose scholars most cited papers published in Tourism Geographies. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (S.A.R., China) is the leading institution, followed by the University of Johannesburg (South Africa) and Griffith University (Australia). All of the universities listed are known for their significant tourism research and education programs. Despite the prominence of the first two schools, anglophone countries predominate, with seven institutions being in the U.S., five in Australia, five in New Zealand, and four in the U.K.

Table 5. Leading institutions of authors citing articles in Tourism Geographies, 1999 to 2018.

Rank	University	Total papers*
1	Hong Kong Polytechnic University	171
2	University of Johannesburg	142
3	Griffith University	126
4	University of Queensland	98
5	University of Waterloo	93
6	University of Oulu	89
7	University of Surrey	88
8	Sun Yat-Sen University	86
9	University of Otago	81
10	Texas A&M University	75
11	Southern Cross University	67
12	Bournemouth University	60
13	University of Florida	59
14	University of Canterbury	58
15	James Cook University	56
16	Kyung Hee University	54
17	Umeå University	52
	University of Central Florida	52
19	University of Waikato	49
	University of South Australia	49
21	North-West University	48
22	Wageningen University and Research Center	43
	Clemson University	43
24	University of Aveiro	40
	University of Exeter	40
	Temple University	40

Source: Authors, compiled from Scopus database, 1999 to 2018.

*Number of papers by authors in each institution in the full Scopus database that cite Tourism Geographies articles.

See Appendix for full table.

The anglophone dominance is also seen in Table 6, which shows the countries in which authors reside who have most frequently cited papers in Tourism Geographies. U.S., U.K., and Australia based authors are considerably higher in total papers published that reference Tourism Geographies articles than are other countries. Spain and China are prominent behind these three as the leading non-anglophone countries on the list, followed by more predominantly English-speaking countries. Europe has the most countries listed in Table 6 and is the region with the most papers citing Tourism Geographies (over 3000), followed by Anglo North America (at about 1500), Asia, Oceania, Africa, and Latin America. This pattern holds true when additional countries are included in this list, and largely reflects the dominance of anglophone academic publishing today.

Table 6. Leading countries of authors citing articles in Tourism Geographies, 1999 to 2018.

Rank	Country	Total papers*
1	United States	1,163
2	United Kingdom	924
3	Australia	817
4	Spain	447
5	China	384
6	Canada	371
7	New Zealand	338
8	South Africa	328
9	Hong Kong	207
10	Italy	204
11	Sweden	201
12	Finland	166
13	Netherlands	149
14	South Korea	148
15	Portugal	147
16	Germany	137
17	Taiwan	127
18	Norway	125
19	Turkey	109
20	Israel	104
21	Malaysia	102
22	Greece	80
23	Poland	77
24	Denmark	74
25	France	71
26	Japan	65
27	Switzerland	53
28	India	51
29	Austria	48
tie	Iceland	48

Source: Authors, compiled from Scopus database, 1999 to 2018.

*Number of papers by authors in each institution in the full Scopus database that cite Tourism Geographies articles.

See Appendix for full table.

The most productive authors in Tourism Geographies

Table 7 shows the most prolific authors who have published in Tourism Geographies, based on the total number of papers (TP) that they have published in the journal from 1999 through 2018. For tie cases, the ranking follows the number of citations received (TC). Additional bibliometric indicators included the h-index (which is an indicator of citation influence), the number of articles in thresholds equal to or above 100, 50, 10, and 1 citation(s), respectively, and the average number of citations per document. For comparison purposes, Table 7 also shows the affiliation, affiliation country, plus the first (Y*), and last (Y**) year in which the authors published in an indexed journal in the Scopus database.

Table 7. Most productive authors of papers in Tourism Geographies, 1999 to 2018.

R	Author	Institution	Country	TP	TC	H	C/P	>100	>50	>10	>1	TP*	TC*	H*	C/P*	Y*	Y**
1	Lew, A.A.	Northern Arizona University	United States	32	187	8	5.8	–	1	8	15	95	1,472	18	15.5	1984	2018
2	Hall, C.M.	University of Canterbury	New Zealand	10	345	5	34.5	1	1	4	8	405	9,569	49	23.6	1984	2019
3	Saarinen, J.	University of Johannesburg	South Africa	9	126	5	14.0	–	–	4	8	92	1,402	19	15.2	1995	2019
4	D'Hauteserre, A.M.	University of Waikato	New Zealand	9	52	5	5.8	–	–	3	5	34	430	9	12.6	1978	2017
5	Ioannides, D.	Mid Sweden University	Sweden	8	183	4	22.9	–	1	4	6	38	712	14	18.7	1992	2018
6	Shoval, N.	Hebrew University of Jerusalem	Israel	7	223	6	31.9	–	1	6	6	64	1,659	24	25.9	2001	2018
7	Wall, G.	University of Waterloo	Canada	7	140	4	20.0	–	1	2	4	199	3,373	35	16.9	1972	2018
8	Brouder, P.	Vancouver Island University	Canada	7	99	4	14.1	–	–	3	4	23	334	11	14.5	2010	2018
9	McKercher, B.	Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ	China	6	215	4	35.8	–	2	4	6	141	4,882	38	34.6	1992	2018
10	Nepal, S.K.	University of Waterloo	Canada	6	197	5	32.8	–	1	5	5	56	1,855	24	33.1	1994	2019
11	Scheyvens, R.	Massey University	New Zealand	6	150	4	25.0	1	1	2	5	45	1,512	16	33.6	1995	2018
12	Meyer-Arendt, K.J.	University of West Florida	United States	6	55	4	9.2	–	–	3	4	32	353	11	11.0	1982	2018
13	Butler, R.W.	Strathclyde Business School	United Kingdom	5	510	5	102.0	1	1	4	5	112	5,607	31	50.1	1974	2018
14	Ateljevic, I.	Institute for Tourism	Croatia	5	404	5	80.8	1	2	5	5	44	1,613	17	36.7	2000	2018
15	Lee, C.K.	Kyung Hee University	South Korea	5	92	5	18.4	–	–	4	5	166	5,023	35	30.3	1995	2019
16	Williams, A.M.	University of Surrey	United Kingdom	4	453	4	113.3	2	2	4	4	143	3,858	32	27.0	1980	2019
17	Coles, T.	University of Exeter	United Kingdom	4	63	3	15.8	–	–	3	3	73	184	17	2.5	1995	2018
18	Collins-Kreiner, N.	University of Haifa	Israel	4	34	3	8.5	–	–	2	4	48	660	12	13.8	1997	2019
19	Che, D.	Southern Cross University	Australia	4	11	2	2.8	–	–	–	3	18	128	5	7.1	2003	2018
20	Biddulph, R.	University of Gothenburg	Sweden	4	9	1	2.3	–	–	–	3	11	47	4	4.3	2011	2018
21	Ong, C.E.	National Univ of Singapore	Singapore	4	9	2	2.3	–	–	–	4	16	195	7	12.2	2007	2017

Source: Authors, Scopus database, 1999 through April 2019.

See Appendix for full table.

Abbreviations: TP = Total papers in Tourism Geographies; TC = Total citations in Tourism Geographies; R = Rank by Total papers in Tourism Geographies; H = h-index of author’s papers in Tourism Geographies; C/P = citations per paper published in Tourism Geographies; 100, ≥ 50, ≥ 10, ≥ 1 = Number of papers with at least 100, 50, 10 and 1 citations in Tourism Geographies, respectively; TP* = total papers in all Scopus indexed journals; TC* = total citations of the author in any indexed journals; H* = h-index of all the author’s Scopus indexed publications; C/P* = citations per paper of all the author’s Scopus indexed publications; Y* = Year of author’s first publication in Scopus; Y** = Year of author’s last publication in Scopus.

Alan A. Lew (#1) is the most productive author in the journal in terms of the number of papers and the h-index. As noted above, this is largely due to his role as the journal’s editor-in-chief. He has been very active in developing the journal from its beginning, which is reflected in numerous editorials and special issue introduction papers that tend to have relatively low citation rates. The journal’s development is also seen in the top 13 most productive authors all being members of the journal’s editorial board. Nine authors received more total citations for their papers than Dr. Lew, with Richard W. Butler (#13), Allan M. Williams (#16), Irena Ateljevic (#14), and C. Michael Hall (#2) being the most prominent. Other authors have published fewer papers in the journal, but what they have published has been very influential, including Simon Milne (#22), David J. Telfer (#23), and Gordon Waitt (#24). The most prominent countries to appear in this ranking are Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Table 7 also shows the ranking of authors who have published in Tourism Geographies based on the entire Scopus database of journals (shown by the * symbol). This listing indicates the overall prominence or influence of authors who have contributed to Tourism Geographies. C. Michael Hall (#2) is the most productive author in terms of the number of papers (TP), citations (TC), and h-index (H). Other Tourism Geographies authors who rank highly in one of more of these categories include Geoffrey Wall (#7), Bob McKercher (#9), Sanjay Nepal (#10), Regina Scheyvens (#11), Choong Ki Lee (#15), Allan M. Williams (#16), Gordon Waitt (#24), and Sheila Agarwal (#28). Using the year of first Scopus publication (Y*) as a proxy for the start of an academic career, Table 7 can also tell us how productive authors have been over the course of their career (Martorell-Cunill et al., 2019). Geoffrey Wall (#7) is the author with a longest research career (46 years), while C. Michael Hall has the highest ratio of documents per year (11.57), followed by Geoffrey Wall and Allan M. Williams, both with a ratio of approximately four papers per year.

Also derived from Table 7 is how significant Tourism Geographies is in the percentage of an author’s total Scopus publications. By this measure, the authors who have a major concentration of their most prominent papers in Tourism Geographies include Amit Biremboim (46%), Tim Coles (34%), Adam Weaver (33%), Simon Milne (30%), and Patrick Brouder (30%). Overall, however, most of the authors who published in Tourism Geographies have diversified their publications in a variety of different journals.

A graphic analysis of co-citations (co-authorship) among the 50 most influential authors who have published in Tourism Geographies is shown in Figure 2. This analysis uses the entire Scopus database and shows four author clusters, which indicates networks of connections among authors who work on similar topics, although cross-cluster relationships also exist. The first cluster is the largest with 21 authors at the top of the figure, centered on Bob McKercher, Alan A. Lew and Geoffrey Wall (as well as Noam Shoval, not shown in Figure 2). It is also important to note that most of the authors of the first cluster (13 of 21) are among the most productive authors in the tourism, leisure, and hospitality field (Mulet-Forteza et al., 2019), which highlights the quality of many of the publications in Tourism Geographies. The second cluster contains 17 authors and is centered on Richard W. Butler and Regina A. Scheyvens (as well as Dimitri Ioannides, Patrick Brouder, and Irena Ateljevic, who are not shown in Figure 2). These authors have the greatest network of connections, both among themselves and with the rest of the authors in cluster two. The third cluster contains eight authors and is dominated by the most productive author overall in Tourism Geographies, C. Michael Hall; while the fourth cluster with six authors is centered on John Urry and consists of many authors who have not published in the journal, but are related otherwise to those who have. With some exceptions, most of the authors in Figure 2 are also in Table 7, indicating no significant differences between the analysis made by the Scopus database using full counting and the VOSviewer Software using fractional or shared authorship counting.

Figure 2. Co-citation of authors in Tourism Geographies, 1999–2018.

Node size = the number of citations received by an author; line thickness indicates multiple connections; line length is not significant.

Citation threshold of 50 and showing the 100 most representative co-citation connections.

Source: Authors, based on Scopus database; figure created using VOSviewer Software.

The most productive institutions and countries in Tourism Geographies

The institutions whose authors collectively have been the most active in Tourism Geographies are shown in Table 8, along with the position that these universities occupy according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) (Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, 2019) and the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Ranking (QS, 2019). Table 8 uses a full counting method in which each author is counted as a full paper, with multiple authored papers being counted multiple times. This approach biases universities with cultures that encourages multiple authors working together on a single paper.

Table 8. The most productive and influential institutions of authors published in Tourism Geographies, 1999 to 2018.

R	University	Country	TP	TC	H	C/P	>100	>50	>10	>1	ARWU	QS
1	Northern Arizona University	United States	22	221	10	10.0	–	1	10	14	501–600	–
2	University of Johannesburg	South Africa	18	219	9	12.2	–	–	6	16	601–700	601–650
3	University of Otago	New Zealand	15	539	10	35.9	1	3	10	13	–	–
4	University of Oulu	Finland	15	168	7	11.2	–	–	6	14	301–400	151
5	University of Exeter	United Kingdom	14	558	8	39.9	2	2	8	9	151–200	152
6	University of Waterloo	Canada	14	275	8	19.6	1	2	7	11	151–200	158
7	Sun Yat-Sen University	China	13	74	5	5.7	–	–	3	9	101–150	319
8	Kyung Hee University	South Korea	12	172	8	14.3	–	–	6	12	–	256
9	National Univ of Singapore	Singapore	11	29	3	2.6	–	–	1	8	85	15
10	Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ	China	10	272	6	27.2	–	2	5	9	201–300	95
11	Wageningen University	Netherlands	10	112	4	11.2	–	–	4	10	101–150	124
12	Umeå University	Sweden	9	143	3	15.9	–	1	3	5	701–800	292
13	University of Waikato	New Zealand	9	44	4	4.9	–	–	3	4	401–500	338
14	University of Surrey	United Kingdom	8	572	8	71.5	1	1	7	8	601–700	601–650
15	University of Queensland	Australia	8	395	7	49.4	1	1	6	8	95	145
16	Hebrew Univ of Jerusalem	Israel	8	238	7	29.8	–	1	7	7	501–600	316
17	Massey University	New Zealand	8	165	6	20.6	1	1	2	7	401–500	214
18	Clemson University	United States	8	106	5	13.3	–	–	3	6	301–400	264
19	Mid Sweden University	Sweden	8	86	3	10.8	–	–	2	6	55	47
20	University of Haifa	Israel	8	77	6	9.6	–	–	4	8	–	–
21	University of Canterbury	New Zealand	8	62	5	7.8	–	–	2	8	601–700	701–750
22	Texas A&M University	United States	7	221	7	31.6	–	1	6	7	101–150	209
23	Leeds Beckett University	United Kingdom	7	185	4	26.4	–	1	4	6	91	60
24	Arizona State University	United States	7	146	5	20.9	–	1	4	5	–	195
25	University of West Florida	United States	7	56	4	8.0	–	–	3	4	–	–
26	Monash University	Australia	7	31	4	4.4	–	–	2	4	–	–
27	Victoria Univ of Wellington	New Zealand	6	490	6	81.7	1	4	6	6	–	–
28	Auckland Univ of Technology	New Zealand	6	336	5	56.0	1	1	5	6	–	–
29	Brock University	Canada	6	235	4	39.2	1	2	4	5	301–400	219
30	RMIT University	Australia	6	174	5	29.0	–	1	3	6	201–300	224
31	Griffith University	Australia	6	166	4	27.7	–	1	3	4	301–400	247
32	Wilfrid Laurier University	Canada	6	115	2	19.2	1	1	1	4	–	441–450
33	University of Newcastle	Australia	6	108	4	18.0	–	1	2	5	401–500	352
34	Ben-Gurion Univ, Negev	Israel	6	58	4	9.7	–	–	3	5	301–400	325

Source: Authors, compiled from Scopus database using ‘full counting’ method with co-authored papers counted as a full paper for each author.

See Appendix for full table.

Abbreviations: R = Rank based on Total papers in Tourism Geographies; TP = Total papers in Tourism Geographies; TC = Total citations in Tourism Geographies; H = h-index of author’s papers in Tourism Geographies; C/P = citations per paper published in Tourism Geographies; 100, ≥ 50, ≥ 10, ≥ 1 = Number of papers with at least 100, 50, 10 and 1 citations in Tourism Geographies, respectively; ARWU = Academic Ranking of World Universities (Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, 2019); QS = Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings (QS, 2019).

The leading institution whose researchers have published in Tourism Geographies in terms of the number of papers and h-index is Northern Arizona University in the U.S. (#1), which presents the same anomaly as in Table 7 due to journal development activities by the editor-in-chief, who is based at that university. Many of the universities listed in Table 8 reflect the home institutions of the journal’s editorial board members. On the other hand, authors from the University of Surrey (#14) and the University of Exeter (#5) received the most total citations, and the University of Queensland (#15) and Auckland University of Technology (#28) received the most citations per paper. The top institutions in terms of total papers are based in the United States (7), Australia (6), New Zealand (6), and United Kingdom (6). Only four universities in Table 8 appear in the top 100 of the ARWU, with Mid Sweden University (#19) ranking the highest at the 55th position. Similarly, four universities appear in the top 100 of the QS ranking, with the National University of Singapore (#9) being 15th on that list.

The technique of bibliographic coupling (Kessler, 1963) is used to produces a graphical analysis of the degree to which authors from the main institutions (Table 8) cite the same documents. Figure 3 shows the 100 strongest bibliographic connections for articles published in Tourism Geographies, based on data available in the Web of Science database for the period of 2007 to 2018; earlier data is not available for this type of analysis.

Figure 3. Bibliographic coupling of article publishing in Tourism Geographies grouped by institutions, 2007–2018.

Node size = the number of citations received by a university; line thickness indicates multiple connections; line length is not significant.

Only includes citation with a threshold of three documents and showing the 100 most representative connections.

Source: Authors, based on the Web of Science database; figure created using VOSviewer Software.

Figure 3 shows a main cluster in the center consisting of 24 institutions primarily from the Europe (especially the U.K., Spain, and Sweden), Australia and New Zealand, North America, China, Israel, South Africa, and Turkey. The dominance of this large cluster shows how authors who publish in Tourism Geographies generally approach tourism studies from a shared perspective, often citing the same, most influential authors. The second cluster toward the top of Figure 3 is formed by six institutions from Australia, China, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, and the U.S., while a third cluster in the upper right is made up of institutions primarily from China and the U.S. There is also a specific North America cluster and a separate Israel cluster. These smaller clusters reflect the work of certain individuals who have distinct international relationships in their work and careers.

Country analysis provides insight into how countries differ in their relationship to Tourism Geographies through their affiliated authors who have published in the journal. Table 9 uses the full counting method which biases countries where multiple authors write articles together, as opposed to working independently.

Table 9. The most productive and influential countries of authors published in Tourism Geographies, 1999 to 2018.

R	Country	TP	TC	H	C/P	>100	>50	>10	>1	Pop (millions)	TP/Pop	TC/Pop
1	United States	169	2,741	30	16.2	2	12	81	137	325.70	0.52	8.42
2	United Kingdom	108	3,165	28	29.3	8	11	67	91	66.64	1.62	47.49
3	Australia	75	1,677	23	22.4	2	6	37	62	24.13	3.11	69.50
4	New Zealand	57	1,566	21	27.5	3	8	32	49	4.88	11.68	320.90
5	Canada	55	1,124	17	20.4	3	6	24	41	36.29	1.52	30.97
6	China	37	369	13	10.0	–	1	15	33	1.386.35	0.03	0.26
7	South Africa	32	467	12	14.6	–	2	13	29	55.91	0.57	8.35
8	Spain	31	444	10	14.3	–	3	10	27	46.56	0.67	9.54
9	Sweden	30	376	11	12.5	–	2	11	21	10.15	2.96	37.04
10	Israel	26	431	12	16.6	–	1	15	23	8.72	2.98	49.43
11	Finland	21	281	9	13.4	–	–	8	19	5.50	3.82	51.06
12	Netherlands	21	219	7	10.4	–	1	7	21	17.02	1.23	12.87
13	Germany	16	249	11	15.6	–	–	11	14	82.79	0.19	3.01
14	South Korea	16	230	9	14.4	–	–	8	16	51.25	0.31	4.49
15	Taiwan	14	166	7	11.9	–	–	3	13	23.57	0.59	7.04
16	Singapore	13	67	4	5.2	–	–	1	10	5.61	2.32	11.94
17	France	12	99	5	8.3	–	–	4	12	66.90	0.18	1.48
18	Denmark	10	328	7	32.8	–	3	5	8	5.77	1.73	56.85
19	Hong Kong	10	324	8	32.4	–	3	7	10	7.41	1.35	43.72
20	Turkey	10	78	5	7.8	–	–	3	8	80.81	0.12	0.97
21	Italy	9	160	7	17.8	–	–	6	7	60.48	0.15	2.65
22	Portugal	8	59	5	7.4	–	–	1	7	10.46	0.76	5.64
23	Poland	8	36	3	4.5	–	–	2	4	37.97	0.21	0.95
24	Norway	7	212	6	30.3	–	2	5	7	5.23	1.34	40.54
25	Hungary	6	66	3	11.0	–	–	3	5	9.78	0.61	6.75
26	Mexico	5	122	4	24.4	–	1	4	5	129.20	0.04	0.94
27	Iceland	4	103	4	25.8	–	–	3	4	0.34	11.83	304.73
28	Belgium	4	90	4	22.5	–	–	4	4	11.35	0.35	7.93
29	Austria	4	51	3	12.8	–	–	3	3	8.77	0.46	5.81
30	Japan	4	34	3	8.5	–	–	2	3	126.80	0.03	0.27

Source: Authors, compiled from Scopus database using ‘full counting’ method with co-authored papers counted as a full paper for each author.

See Appendix for full table.

Abbreviations: R = Rank based on Total papers; TP = Total papers; TC = Total citations; H = h-index of author’s papers in Tourism Geographies; C/P = citations per paper published in Tourism Geographies; 100, ≥ 50, ≥ 10, ≥ 1 = Number of papers with at least 100, 50, 10 and 1 citations in Tourism Geographies, respectively; POP = population; TP/Pop = total publications per millions of inhabitants; TC/Pop = total citations per million inhabitants.

Although Tourism Geographies is published in the United Kingdom by Routledge/Taylor & Francis, its lead editors are international and it publishes articles by authors from many countries. However, there are clear biases in the distribution of these papers. In general, larger population countries (U.S., U.K., South Africa, China, Spain) have published more papers, but the largest of these (U.S. and China) have very low total papers (TP) and citations (TC) per country population. On top of this, countries where English is widely spoken, especially among academics, also tend to publish more papers, which is especially seen in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and in Scandinavian countries.

Almost half (8 of 18) of the papers in Tourism Geographies that have received the most citations (over 100) were published by authors based in the U.K., while authors based in the U.S. have published the highest number of papers with at least 50, 10, and 1 citations. New Zealand and Iceland stand out noticeably with extremely high numbers of papers and citations for the size of their populations. There are other small countries that have received citations per population that better those of the U.K., including Israel, Finland, Denmark, Cyprus.

At the country level the most cited documents published by authors affiliated with U.S. and U.K. institutions focused on tourism sustainability and climate change. In general, however, U.K. based authors had considerably higher citations per paper. Authors affiliated with U.S. institutions tended to be more related to the reduction of poverty through tourism. For Australia, the most referenced topics focus on ‘representation circles’ (or circles of culture) among backpacker tourists and on the comparison between temporary and permanent migrations, while the most cited New Zealand based research related to tourism and migration and tourism and poverty. Finally, the most prominent topics addressed by authors from the African continent, with South Africa at the forefront, addressed issues related to the economy, sustainable tourism and gay tourism.

Tourism Geographies in ‘Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management’

The Scopus database indexes 88 journals under the category of ‘Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management’ (Table 10). The journals listed are broad, including many non-tourism journals that only occasionally include a tourism topic paper. Tourism Geographies seeks to place itself at the juncture of tourism studies and human geography studies, which is narrower than the larger Scopus category.

Table 11. Reference citation from other journals to articles in Tourism Geographies, 1999 to 2018.

Rank	Journal	Total citations	Total link strength
1	Annals of Tourism Research	1,961	1,359.28
2	Tourism Management	1,308	1,026.88
3	Tourism Geographies	1,072	835.95
4	Journal of Travel Research	648	530.56
5	Journal of Sustainable Tourism	472	390.61
6	Current Issues in Tourism	257	236.50
7	Progress in Human Geography	181	164.86
8	International Journal of Tourism Research	171	162.43
9	Tourist Studies	156	144.16
10	Annals of The Association of American Geographers	127	117.79
11	Journal of Leisure Research	119	102.11
12	Journal of Environmental Psychology	116	85.63
13	Tourism Recreation Research	114	107.53
14	Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing	112	106.15
15	Environment and Planning	111	105.70
16	Urban Studies	105	89.61
17	The Tourist Gaze	96	93.34
18	Environment and Planning D	94	88.94
19	Tourism Economics	92	82.05
20	Leisure Sciences	91	78.24
21	Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism	88	82.14
22	International Journal of Hospitality Management	78	73.75
23	Economic Geography	77	71.96
24	Leisure Studies	74	72.58
25	Regional Studies	74	69.34
26	Geojournal	69	64.53
27	Geoforum	68	65.62
28	Journal of Rural Studies	68	52.95
29	Tourism Analysis	66	64.78
30	Journal of Vacation Marketing	64	62.23

Source: Authors, compiled from Scopus database.

Table 12. The 50 most common and influential keywords in Tourism Geographies, 1999 to 2018.

R	Keywords	TP	TC	H	C/P	>100	>50	>10	>1
1	Tourism Development	181	2,899	29	16.02	1	10	96	166
2	Tourism	177	3,631	34	20.51	4	16	97	163
3	Tourist Destination	169	3,622	35	21.43	2	18	89	162
4	Tourism Management	100	1,770	25	17.70	–	5	64	94
5	Tourist Behavior	75	1,641	26	21.88	1	7	44	74
6	Tourism Market	66	1,070	19	16.21	1	4	29	64
7	Tourist Attraction	63	1,452	23	23.05	1	8	38	61
8	Eurasia	59	1,595	24	27.03	1	7	50	59
9	Tourism Economics	55	969	20	17.62	1	2	32	53
10	China	55	858	18	15.60	–	2	25	51
11	Ecotourism	51	880	16	17.25	–	5	28	47
12	Heritage Tourism	50	769	16	15.38	1	1	23	48
13	Perception	48	1,031	16	21.48	1	5	23	48
14	Europe	43	1,066	19	24.79	2	4	33	41
15	United States	39	486	12	12.46	–	–	15	38
16	Sustainability	34	793	17	23.32	1	3	26	33
17	Australia	30	945	15	31.50	2	3	18	29
18	Travel Behavior	29	499	11	17.21	–	2	11	26
19	Recreational Activity	28	630	12	22.50	1	1	13	28
20	International Tourism	27	653	17	24.19	–	2	20	27
21	Sustainable Development	27	446	12	16.52	–	2	17	27
22	Asia	26	729	16	28.04	–	4	20	26
23	Sense of Place	25	697	13	27.88	1	5	15	25
24	Urban Area	25	535	13	21.40	–	2	14	25
25	Rural Area	24	510	13	21.25	–	3	15	22
26	Spain	24	486	10	20.25	1	3	10	23
27	United Kingdom	23	412	15	17.91	–	–	17	22
28	Conceptual Framework	21	522	11	24.86	1	4	11	18
29	Landscape	21	438	11	20.86	1	3	11	18
30	New Zealand	21	383	11	18.24	–	1	13	21
31	Climate Change	21	318	9	15.14	–	1	9	20
32	Globalization	20	843	13	42.15	3	4	15	20
33	Mobility	20	378	11	18.90	–	2	11	19
34	GIS	19	504	11	26.53	1	3	12	16
35	Marketing	19	446	12	23.47	1	2	12	16
36	Canada	19	439	11	23.11	1	2	11	19
37	North America	18	480	12	26.67	1	2	15	18
38	Western Europe	17	295	11	17.35	–	–	13	17
39	Stakeholder	17	222	8	13.06	–	1	7	14
40	World	16	474	12	29.63	1	2	14	16
41	Urban Tourism	16	264	9	16.50	–	–	9	14
42	Rural Tourism	16	220	9	13.75	–	1	9	14
43	National Park	16	131	6	8.19	–	–	3	15
44	Cultural Heritage	16	127	6	7.94	–	–	6	15
45	Sustainable Tourism	15	637	9	42.47	1	2	9	15
46	Australasia	15	371	11	24.73	–	1	13	15
47	Entrepreneur	15	363	10	24.20	–	2	10	15
48	Community Development	15	235	8	15.67	–	1	7	15
49	Authenticity	14	264	9	18.86	–	1	9	13
50	Coastal Zone	14	205	7	14.64	–	1	6	13

Source: Authors, compiled from Scopus database.

Abbreviations: R = Rank based on Total papers; TP = Total papers; TC = Total citations; H = h-index of author’s papers in Tourism Geographies; C/P = citations per paper published in Tourism Geographies; 100, ≥ 50, ≥ 10, ≥ 1 = Number of papers with at least 100, 50, 10 and 1 citations in Tourism Geographies, respectively.

Table 10 is ordered by the two-year Scimago impact factor (SJR IF) for 2017, which covers citations during 2016 and 2017. Tourism Geographies occupies the twelfth position in this ranking. Based on the number of total citations received by the journal (TC), Tourism Geographies occupies the nineteenth position. However, these citations have been obtained with fewer published documents than most of the top 10 journals. Thus, ranked on citations per paper (C/P), Tourism Geographies is located in the 14th position.

The journals can also be ranked by the average number of citations received annually since their inclusion in the Scopus database (TC/Y). For this, Tourism Geographies occupies the 15th position, with an average of 624 citations per year. Based on an h-index ranking (H), Tourism Geographies occupies the 19th position in the ranking.

The journal Tourism Management held the highest Scimago impact factor in 2017, as well as having the most articles (TP) and the most citations (TC). On the other hand, the Annals of Tourism Research is the journal with the highest h-index (H), and the Journal of Service Management has the highest citations per document (C/P). The Annals of Tourism Research is the only journal that has documents that have reached the threshold of 1000 citations, and this journal also leads in the documents that have obtained at least 100, 250, and 500 citations since its founding in 1973. The Annals of Tourism Research is the journal that is closest to Tourism Geographies based on co-citations, followed by Tourism Management (Table 11). Tourism Geographies is completely unrelated to the Journal of Service Management.

The 100 strongest co-citation linkages of other journals to Tourism Geographies (which is partially shown in Table 11) is graphically represented in Figure 4. This figure shows three main and one secondary cluster. The first cluster, led by Tourism Geographies, consists of 17 journals, 12 of which are indexed in the ‘Geography, Planning, and Development’ field of the Scopus database. Some of the journals of this cluster are also indexed in the ‘Earth-Surface Processes’ and ‘Environmental Science (miscellaneous)’ fields (4 journals in each field). The second cluster is centered on the Annals of Tourism Research and includes 11 journals, ten of which are indexed in the ‘Tourism, Leisure, and Hospitality Management’ field. Four journals in this cluster are also indexed in the ‘Geography, Planning, and Development’ field. ‘Tourism’ and ‘Geography’ are the two Scopus fields that Tourism Geographies is indexed in and these first two clusters shows the approximate relevance of each to the journal.

Figure 4. Co-citation of journals in Tourism Geographies, 1999–2018. (Source: Authors, based on Scopus database).

Co-citation occurs when two papers from two different journals receive a citation from the same third paper (Merigó, Pedrycz, Weber, & de la Sotta, 2018).

Node size = the number of citations received by a journal; line thickness indicates multiple connections; line length is not significant.

Only includes citation with a threshold of 50 and the 100 most representative co-citation connections.

The third node in Figure 4 is led by Tourist Studies. It is also composed of 11 journals indexed in the ‘Tourism, Leisure, and Hospitality Management’ (6 journals) and ‘Geography, Planning and Development’ (3 journals), which is similar to that of the fourth cluster of three journals with the Journal of Sustainable Tourism at its center. In addition, the data in Figure 4 shows the multidisciplinary character of Tourism Geographies, as it receives citations from 19 Scopus fields. In addition to those listed above, Tourism Geographies is cited in articles published in journals indexed in ‘Environmental Science (miscellaneous)’, ‘Sociology and Political Science’, ‘Earth-Surface Processes’, and ‘Demography’. Finally, with a few exceptions, most of the journals with articles citing papers in Tourism Geographies are in the first quartile of the fields they are indexed in.

Research topics in Tourism Geographies

The analysis of research topics in Tourism Geographies are based on keywords and are presented in two ways. The first is a frequency ranking of the 50 most used keywords for articles published in the journal from 1999 to 2018, based on full counting (keywords per author – more authors results in more keywords) in the Scopus database (Table 12). The second is prepared through the VOSviewer Software using fractional counting (keywords per paper – the number of keywords is not affected by the number of authors). Fractional counting also allows showing the relationships among authors.

Despite the difference between full counting (Table 12) and fractional counting (Figure 5), the overall keyword frequency is about the same, with the most common keywords in the table (“Tourism development”, “Tourism”, and “Tourism destination”) also holding a prominent position in the figure. The keywords further reflect the journal’s relationship to the areas in which it is indexed, especially the tourism and geography fields. Based on the total number of keywords, Tourism Geographies primarily publishes papers related to issues in the development of tourism places. This is slightly different from the what was found in looking at the most cited papers in Table 2 (and elsewhere) in which sustainable tourism, migration, and other topics were more prominent. This difference can be somewhat seen in the citations per paper column in Table 12, where globalization, sustainable tourism, and sense of place are more prominent than the keywords that appear at the top of list. However, it is even more apparent in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Co-occurrence of author keywords Tourism Geographies, 1999–2018. (Source: Authors, based on Scopus database).

Co-occurrence of author keywords measures the most common keywords used in the documents.

Node size = the number of citations received by a keyword; line thickness indicates multiple connections; line length is not significant.

Only includes citation with a threshold of 5 and the 100 most representative connections; figure created using VOSviewer Software.

The co-occurrence of keywords is shown graphically in Figure 5, based on fractional (per author) counting. The lines connect words that are most likely to appear in the same paper. The depth of shading of the icons further shows the average year of publication of the articles in which the keywords appeared.

The most frequent keywords in Figure 5 are “Tourism”, followed by “China” and “Heritage”. Other prominent keywords are “Climate change”, “Sustainability”, “Sustainable development”, “Sustainable tourism”, “Nature tourism”, and “Ecotourism”, which are closely related to certain older manuscripts published in the journal that have received a considerable number of citations in Table 2, especially, Butler (#1), Milne and Ateljevic (#4), and Carmichael (#9). However, most of the prominent keywords that dominate Figure 5 originated between 2010 and 2014, including “Rural tourism”, “Urban tourism”, and “Regional development”. Keywords that appear in the figure from the most recent two-year period (2017 and 2018) are primarily based on special issues and include “Theme park”, “Inclusive tourism” and “Content analysis”. Tourism Geographies is also about geography and place, so keywords such as “China”, “New Zealand”, “Australia”, “Sweden”, “South Africa”, “Mexico”, “Taiwan”, “England”, “Finland”, “Hong Kong”, and “Japan” are also highlighted in importance in the journal.

One of the biggest changes in Tourism Geographies has been an increase in the number of special issues published each year, which seems to reflect a trend across the tourism journal field. In the 15-year period from 1999 to 2013, the journal published 14 special issues. Most of these were compiled by the editor-in-chief from papers submissions that coincidentally shared a common theme. In 2014 the journal went from four to five issues a year, along with an increase in the page format size. This allowed for a large backlog of papers to be published, and from those the editors created three special issues. The themes of these special issues summarize the main research topics in the journal at that time:

1. New research paradigms – evolutionary economic geography, political ecology, resilience, and sustainability indicators.

2. Cultural geographies – peripheral areas, rural images, media, heritage, landscapes, performance, and tourism discourses.

3. Managing global change – climate change and weather event impacts and adaptations, community change, and environmental conservation.

The trend toward special issues has increased even more in recent years, with 2017 and 2018 each seeing four special issues, plus the journal’s first ‘virtual special issue’ (online only) organized by guest editors. Topics from the most recent special issues and those currently in production include inclusive tourism, overtourism, tourism and labor, pilgrimage tourism, liminal landscapes, cultural ecosystem services, placemaking, affective attunements, digital inequalities, migration and tourism, and health and wellbeing.

Summary and conclusions

Tourism Geographies is a leading journal in the main Scopus categories that it is indexed in: ‘Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management’ and the ‘Geography, Planning and Development’. These diverse fields highlight the journal’s interdisciplinary nature. Approximately 85% of the papers published in Tourism Geographies have received citations in the Scopus database. The most cited documents have obtained more than 50 citations. The most cited paper was Richard W. Butler's 1999 paper titled ‘Sustainable tourism: A state-of-the-art review’. Alan A. Lew, C. Michael Hall, and Jarkko Saarinen have been the most productive authors in terms of the number of publications. They are all also co-editors of the journal, which gives them incentive to write specifically for it. Overall, Richard W. Butler, Allan M. Williams, and Irena Ateljevic have been the most influential in terms of citations through the first 20 years of the journal’s publication. Papers from the U.S. and the U.K. together comprised 31% of publications and 36% of total citations. However, there are also many other countries whose researchers have contributed influentially to the journal.

Tourism Geographies is closely related to other leading journals indexed in the ‘Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management’ and ‘Geography, Planning and Development’ fields. In this sense, the most cited papers in Tourism Geographies itself are from the journals that it is most closely links, including the Annals of Tourism Research and Tourism Management. This is evident from the predominant keywords in Tourism Geographies, such as, among others, “Tourism development”, “Tourist destination”, “Tourist attraction”, “Heritage tourism”, “Perception”, “Sustainability”, and “Travel behavior”. Among the most viewed papers are those addressing issues related to sustainability, poverty, and community planning.

The number of journals published the field of tourism studies has grown enormously over the 20-year period covered in this review, which largely reflects the growth of tourism studies in institutions of higher learning, and of tourism as a global phenomenon. Tourism Geographies has successfully established itself as a highly regarded journal although within a somewhat niche subfield that integrates tourism studies and geography studies. It is likely that this success will continue as scholars seek the most effective way to disseminate their thinking and research.

This paper has some limitations. First, the data were collected from the Scopus database, which has some restrictions, especially regarding the emphasis on full counting and the inability to break a paper out proportionally by author (fractional counting). To overcome this limitation, fractional counting was obtained using the VOSviewer software. The results of these two analyses are very similar and, consequently, there are no significant deviations between full and fractional counting systems for Tourism Geographies. In addition, only articles, reviews, and academic notes have been included in this analysis of Tourism Geographies. These comprised 89% of the total available documents as of December 2018. Despite these limitations, the results provide a comprehensive bibliometric overview of the main research trends in Tourism Geographies over the 20 years since its inception.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

José M. Merigó

José M. Merigó is Professor at the University of Chile and at the University of Technology Sydney (Australia). His research fields include ordered weighted averaging operators (OWA), decision making, uncertainty, and bibliometric analysis.

Carles Mulet-Forteza

Carles Mulet-Forteza is Assistant Professor at the University of the Balearic Islands. His research fields include tourism companies, tourism strategy, finance, and bibliometrics.

Cristina Valencia

Cristina Valencia is a PhD student at the University of the Balearic Islands. She is currently interested in bibliometrics, tourism, and geography.

Alan A. Lew

Alan A. Lew is Professor Emeritus at Northern Arizona University and the founding editor-in-chief of Tourism Geographies. His recent research has focused on tourism as placemaking and tourism’s contribution to global consciousness and understanding.