To Whom Are We Listening? Measuring the Pulse of Geography Education Research, 2010

This study analyzes citations from thirty-six articles published in volume 34 (2010) of the Journal of Geography in Higher Education (JGHE). This is one of the dominant publications in the suite of international journals focusing on geography education. Our purpose is to explore the question, to whom are “we” – the geography education community – listening? Citations from these articles were categorized as originating from the journal subject categories geography education, geography, or non-geography. Simple count and percent summaries of citations from individual journals within subject categories, and overall across categories were extracted from the thirty-six articles. The quality of these citations were assessed using each journal’s SCImago Journal Ranking (SJR) score and quartile standing for 2010. Weighted citation values were calculated to rank the leading contributing journals to the JGHE. The results indicated that the JGHE is underpinned by a diversity of high-impact journals from all three categories including the Journal of Geography in Higher Education (self-cites), Science Education, Progress in Human Geography, and The Professional Geographer. Our data revealed that this volume of JGHE cited articles from a diverse range of journals with 47.5% from geography (30.3% geography education and 17.2 percent geography) and 52.5% from non-geography journals. Education journals comprised 62.5% of the citations from the non-geography category. These statistics suggest the scholars in geography education are reaching within and across the discipline to enhance and propel their research activities.