Reflections on Five Years as Coeditors

Five years as Coeditors of The Journal of Map & Geography Libraries has passed quickly for us and the world is a decidedly different place than it was when we initially embarked on this journey. We assumed editorial responsibilities in 2018 from long-standing coeditors (and co-founder in the case of Andrew) Paige Andrew and Katherine Hart knowing that we were unlikely to be able to fill their shoes but inspired by the purity of their motivation to foster a journal, “… to benefit our colleagues and anyone with an interest in or work[ing] with maps writ large.” (Andrew 2017). Overwhelmingly, our sentiment at the end of five years as Coeditors of this journal is one of gratitude for the opportunity to make a small contribution to building and maintaining the scholarly record of map and geography librarianship.

We began our tenure by introducing ourselves to each other and to journal readership by laying out our vision for the map and geography library community in two introductory editorials titled “In Defense of the Map Library” (Bidney and Piekielek 2018a) and “Towards a new paradigm in map and spatial information librarianship” (Bidney and Piekielek 2018b). The first editorial was in part a call to action for the map and geography library community to contribute formal scholarship and useful advice to colleagues about how to build and sustain support for map collections in contemporary academic libraries. To our knowledge we did not receive a response to this call and the topic unfortunately remains relevant today as evidenced by peer-reviewed articles in the present issue (see Quin and Reyes articles this issue). The second editorial was more forward-looking and concluded by answering our own question about the contemporary value of map and geography libraries. At the time of writing the present editorial (July 2023), these two introductory editorials were the third and fourth most viewed articles in the journal over the last five years and together have been cited eight times by other authors. With the benefit of time, we think this approach of synthesizing the state of the discipline and laying out a potential future vision was needed and well-received. It was exciting and a privilege to write these two editorials and they may have been the most impactful thing that we achieved in our time as coeditors.

Previous editors started beneficial traditions for the journal that we continued alongside some new ones that we initiated. Since 2007, the journal has awarded a ‘Best Paper of the Year’ and that tradition continues to date. Some very deserving papers and authors have been distinguished with this award and we were honored to publish these in the journal and give them the recognition that they deserved. Indeed, all five volumes that we published had numerous deserving papers and it was rewarding to pause each year and take stock of the great work that our colleagues from around the world were submitting to and publishing in the journal. We would like to thank the Best Paper of the Year committee members for their service, many of them were deserving authors themselves.

A new tradition that we initiated highlighted professional conferences that our community was attending. As a diverse and often cross-cutting academic community we often attend different conferences and figuring out how to effectively spend our limited professional development resources can be a challenge. To help people to make informed decisions we recruited authors to write about their experiences in a ‘Conference Highlights’ column. Conference Highlights included overviews of peoples’ experiences at FOSS4G (Quill and Djenno 2018), the North American Cartographic Information Society annual meetings (Kayko 2019), Geo4Lib Camp (Majewicz 2018), and the Western Association of Map Libraries annual conference (Toro 2020) – all great conferences that we continue to encourage people to attend. We are sure that there are other conferences worthy of being highlighted and if this tradition continues, we look forward to reading about (and possibly attending) other conferences. Online views of the conference column editorials have been modest at best, but we hope that they helped to educate people about what professional conferences are out there and why you might attend one over another.

The international nature of the journal was one of the most attractive aspects of editing the journal when we were initially considering the opportunity, and this did not disappoint. Over the last five years, we received submissions from 20 different countries detailing the fantastic work of our international colleagues. The journal truly benefited from the diversity of work, opinions, and points of view represented by authors from all over the world. We hope that international authors and readers continue to grow under new journal leadership for everyone’s benefit.

Anytime that you finish something big (like editing a journal for five years), we think it is natural to reflect on what you have accomplished. The impact of journal editorship is pretty hard to measure, but we feel positive about a few of the metrics that suggest we have done a good job. We published 55 articles across 15 issues with an acceptance rate of 62% (generated with ScholarOne Reports July 2023). Online article viewership grew from 7,700 total views in the year (2017) before we assumed editorship responsibilities to 12,500 (provided by Taylor & Francis) in the last complete calendar year (2022) of our term. We acknowledge that increased online activity for the journal could be a reflection of changes in work habits (more online rather than print) and is likely against a backdrop of increased scholarly activity in general; but we are optimistic that there was an actual increase in interest in the journal over the last five years. That said, seven out of the top ten most viewed articles in the journal’s history were published under previous editors. This may be in part a reflection of time passed since article publication and we think this may change over the next five years, we are interested to see.

Although we prefer online viewership as a measure of interest in works published in the journal, another often used metric used to evaluate a journal’s success is its citation or impact score. At the time of writing this editorial the journal advertises a Scopus CiteScore of 0.6. This score describes the average number of citations that an article received over a four-year period following publication. This is a modest number, but one that has held steady during our term as Coeditors. We also acknowledge that citations are not the best measure of impact in our field where rates of publication (and therefore opportunities for articles to be cited) is fairly low. We would like to see this score increase in concert with increased publication from our community as well as increased impact of our scholarly work through, for example, citation by other fields.

No farewell editorial would be complete without a lengthy list of ‘Thank Yous’ starting with the former Coeditors Paige Andrew and Katherine Hart who patiently mentored us in the early part of our tenure and were always more than generous with their time. We are also deeply indebted to the journal’s Editorial Board for their service, most of whom served for the entire five years of our editorship. Early in our term we assembled a diverse and accomplished Editorial Board that we called on regularly when we needed extra help and/or advice and guidance when faced with challenging decisions and they came through for us every time, demonstrating their commitment to the journal and discipline. Another important group to which we owe thanks are peer-reviewers without whom the journal could not function. Some reviews are more extensive than others, but every author benefited from the feedback they received, and we can say with confidence that every paper was improved by the peer-review process.

Last but certainly not least, we owe thanks to every author who submitted a paper to the journal. Perhaps the most daunting challenge that we faced over the last five years was attracting high-quality content to the journal with which to fill three issues per year. We tried several strategies to do this, but ultimately were at the mercy of the whims, interests, and time of authors. Thank you to everyone who submitted content to the journal, we know that you had options of other outlets for your work. Journal editors might be driving the ship, but if there’s no body of water in which to float it’s not going anywhere.

More people than we could possibly list and acknowledge in this farewell editorial have helped, offered help, and generally supported us over the last five years and for this we offer you all our sincere thanks. We hope to be able to pay you all back in some small way someday and look forward to continuing to work with you in a different capacity. Who knows, maybe we’ll be proposing a special issue to the new journal editors in the future?

We are proud of what we have accomplished over the last five years and are excited to see where new Coeditors Josh Sadvari and Theresa Quill take the journal. We have had the pleasure of working with Josh and Theresa on a special issue (Volume 18 issues 2-3), as well as have gotten to know them as colleagues through conference attendance and other service work. They are a smart and competent duo who complement each other well and are more than capable of taking the helm at the journal. Good luck Josh and Theresa and we are here to support you in your journey as Coeditors of the Journal of Map & Geography Libraries as previous editors were there to support us.

Nathan Piekielek
[email protected] Bidney© 2023 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLChttps://doi.org/10.1080/15420353.2023.2239692