About Geographical Science

地理科学 (Geographical Science / Scientia Geographica Sinica)

地理科学, read Dili Kexue in pinyin and rendered on its own English pages as Geographical Science — and known internationally by the Latin-style name Scientia Geographica Sinica — is one of China's principal comprehensive geography journals. Founded in 1981, it is governed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, sponsored jointly by the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Geographical Society of China, and published by Science Press in China. Its ISSN is 1000-0690. Written in Chinese for the national research community, it publishes the newest results, theories, findings, ideas and methods in geographical science, with priority for work that is innovative and at the frontier of the discipline and for work that joins basic theory to application.

Two neighbouring titles must not be confused with it. The same Changchun institute also sponsors Chinese Geographical Science, an English-language journal founded later, with ISSN 1002-0063, published with Science Press and Springer; that is a separate journal with its own ISSN and its own article record. And 地理学报 (Acta Geographica Sinica), the Geographical Society of China's flagship, is another distinct title again. 地理科学 is the Chinese-language comprehensive journal identified by ISSN 1000-0690, edited in Changchun, and that identifier is the reliable way to distinguish it in catalogues and citations.

Quick Facts

• Chinese title: 地理科学
• English rendering used by the journal: Geographical Science; also cited internationally as Scientia Geographica Sinica
• Pinyin: Dili Kexue
• ISSN: 1000-0690
• Founded: 1981
• Governing body: Chinese Academy of Sciences
• Sponsors: Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Geographical Society of China
• Publisher: Science Press, China
• Editorial base: Changchun, Jilin Province (editorial office address given by the institute as 3195 Weishan Road, Changchun 130012)
• Language: Chinese, with the journal maintaining English information pages for international readers
• Field: Comprehensive geography — physical geography, human geography, resources and environment, remote sensing and geographic information systems
• Standing: Recognised in China as one of the country's three great geography journals; listed in Chinese core-journal and citation systems detailed below
• Article charge: No journal-specific charge is stated in the English journal information consulted for this profile; authors should consult the journal's current Chinese author instructions, and any charge not stated there is described here as not publicly disclosed in the material reviewed.

History and Standing

The journal was founded in 1981, in the first years of China's reform and opening period, when Chinese science was rebuilding its institutions and reconnecting with international research. Geography had urgent work to do in that setting: a vast country was beginning rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, its land, water and ecosystems were coming under new pressure, and planners needed the regional surveys, resource assessments and environmental baselines that geographers supply. A comprehensive national journal, sponsored by a Chinese Academy of Sciences institute and by the national geographical society, gave that work a home. The Changchun base is significant: the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, formerly the Changchun Institute of Geography, brought strengths in wetlands, black soils, regional development and the geography of China's northeast, and the journal grew from that institute into a national platform rather than a house journal in the narrow sense.

Its standing inside China is unusually well documented by the journal itself. It is recognised as one of the "Three Geographical Journals" of China, a label that places it in the small group of titles that define the discipline nationally. In the national catalogue of Chinese High-Quality Scientific Journals it was classified in 2020 and 2021 as a Grade T1 journal — the top tier — in physical geography, in human geography and in natural resources, and as Grade T2 in the information-geology field. It has been supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Publishing Foundation, has won the third and fourth "Outstanding S&T Journals of China" honours, has been named a "High International Impact Academic Journal of China" for years, won "Excellent Geographical Journal" recognition in 2000 and 2020, and was selected among the top 30 scientific journals of Jilin Province. For a researcher deciding where a Chinese-language geography paper will be read and credited, these domestic classifications matter more than any foreign metric, because Chinese research evaluation relies heavily on exactly these national systems.

The journal's longevity has also made it an archive of Chinese geography's development. A bibliometric study of China's four major geography journals, drawing on the China National Knowledge Infrastructure, counted more than three thousand documents published in 地理科学 between its 1981 founding and 2014 alone, with its most-cited papers accumulating hundreds of citations. Read across four decades, its pages trace the discipline's movement from regional description and resource inventory toward process studies, modelling, remote sensing and global-change science — the same movement Chinese geography itself made as funding, data and computing transformed it.

Aims and Scope

The journal states its aim plainly: to publish the latest research achievements and new theories, findings, ideas and methods in geographical science, focusing on innovative and cutting-edge content, giving priority to articles that combine the basic theories and the applications of the discipline, and promoting interaction between geography and neighbouring subjects. It is, by design, a comprehensive and interdisciplinary journal rather than a narrow specialist title. Its stated publishing scope names the application of remote sensing for the environment and of geographic information systems; the human–land relationship; natural resources; population; environment; energy; climate change; and sea-level rise. It especially welcomes frontier results funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, by State Key Laboratory foundations, by national science and technology programmes and by other key projects — a detail that tells authors the journal expects much of its content to be the reported output of major funded research.

The human–land relationship

The human–land relationship is the theoretical heart of Chinese geography, and it runs through this journal. The phrase denotes the coupled system in which human activity reshapes land, water and ecosystems, and in which environmental change in turn constrains settlement, farming, industry and cities. Papers in this tradition study land-use change and its drivers, urbanisation and its ecological footprint, rural transformation, regional development disparities and the carrying capacity of particular territories. Because the journal is comprehensive, such work appears beside the physical studies that measure the environmental side of the same relationship, allowing readers to follow a problem from process to policy within a single title.

Physical geography, resources and environment

Physical geography and the resource–environment sciences supply the journal's second great bloc of content: landforms, climate, hydrology, soils, wetlands and ecosystems, together with the inventory and sustainable use of natural resources. The sponsoring institute's own strengths in wetland ecology and in the black-soil agriculture of the northeast are visible in the journal's ecology and agriculture-related content, but the coverage is national, extending to arid lands, mountains, coasts and great river basins. Sea-level rise, named in the scope, signals the coastal and climate dimension: work on how rising seas, changing precipitation and warming affect China's densely populated eastern seaboard sits naturally here. Energy, likewise named, appears chiefly through its geographical face — resource distribution, energy landscapes and the spatial consequences of energy transition.

Remote sensing and geographic information systems

The scope expressly includes the application of environmental remote sensing and of geographic information systems. These are the discipline's modern instruments: satellite observation that tracks land cover, vegetation, water and urban growth through time, and spatial analysis that turns those observations into models and decisions. Papers in this strand are typically methodological and applied at once — a new index, classification or model, demonstrated on a real Chinese landscape and evaluated against ground data. Their presence in a general journal, rather than only in specialist remote-sensing titles, reflects how thoroughly geospatial methods have become part of ordinary geographical practice in China.

Population, regions and development

Population is named in the scope, and with it comes the human geography of migration, urban systems, regional economies and spatial planning. China's internal migration, the growth and shrinkage of cities, the restructuring of industrial regions such as the northeast, and the geography of inequality between coast and interior are all subjects this journal's community studies. Such articles serve readers beyond academia: geographical research in China has a long tradition of informing territorial planning and regional policy, and a journal sponsored by the Academy and the national society is written partly for the planners and administrators the journal's own descriptions list among its audiences, alongside researchers, teachers and graduate students.

Article Types

The journal welcomes a wider range of contributions than the standard research paper alone. Its stated list is: research articles; research reports; review articles; discussions; techniques and methods papers; dissertation abstracts; book reviews; and academic activity reports, on the topics within its scope. Each type does different work. Research articles carry new evidence. Reports communicate funded-project results efficiently. Reviews synthesise a fast-moving field for the national community — valuable in a discipline where much international literature is in English and a Chinese synthesis genuinely adds access. Discussions allow scholars to contest interpretations, a sign of a journal that sees itself as a forum and not only an archive. Techniques-and-methods papers spread new instruments through the community, and dissertation abstracts and activity reports knit the journal into the institutional life of Chinese geography, recording who is working on what, and where the field is gathering.

Indexing and Recognition

The journal's own indexing list is long and mostly national, which is the correct shape for a Chinese-language disciplinary flagship. Internationally, it records indexing in Current Geographical Publications (United States), the Russian Abstracts Journal, the Japan Science and Technology Agency's services and Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, and it notes that the journal is collected by the Library of Congress in the United States and maintains close relationships with universities and research institutes in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada, Russia and Japan. Domestically, it is a Chinese Core Journal in both the natural-science and social-science core lists, and it is included in the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI), the Chinese Science and Technology Paper and Citation Database (CSTPCD) and the Chinese Science Citation Database (CSCD), as well as in Chinese geographical and resources abstracting services and the China Academic Journal collections. Inclusion in CSSCI and CSCD simultaneously is noteworthy: it certifies the journal in both the social-science and natural-science evaluation worlds, matching its position across human and physical geography. Listings of open-access journals in mainland China also record the title, with Science Press as publisher, which helps explain its wide digital availability to Chinese readers.

Publisher, Sponsors and Editorial Home

Three institutions stand behind the journal, and the division of labour is typical of major Chinese Academy journals. The Chinese Academy of Sciences governs it. The Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology and the Geographical Society of China sponsor it — the institute supplying the editorial home in Changchun and much of the scholarly community, the society connecting it to geographers in universities across China. Science Press, China's leading scientific publisher, publishes it. Authors should note the editorial office's published contact route — the institute gives the journal's address at 3195 Weishan Road, Changchun, with the journal mailbox at its institute domain — and should always take submission instructions from the journal's own site, since Chinese journals' manuscript systems and formatting norms are specific and are updated there.

Distinguishing the Journal in Practice

Bibliographic confusion around this title is common enough to deserve a section of its own. In English, three different Chinese geography journals can all surface under similar names: this journal (地理科学, Geographical Science / Scientia Geographica Sinica, ISSN 1000-0690, Chinese language); Chinese Geographical Science (ISSN 1002-0063, English language, also Changchun-sponsored, published with Springer); and the Journal of Geographical Sciences (ISSN 1009-637X, English language, Beijing). Citation databases have historically merged and split such records, which is one reason the short profile from which this article was expanded carried subject fragments that do not match the journal's official scope. The ISSN, the language of the article and the sponsoring institute together identify the correct title in every case. A Chinese-language article in a Changchun Academy journal on wetlands, land use or regional development, cited with ISSN 1000-0690, belongs to 地理科学.

Why the Journal Matters

For readers outside China, 地理科学 is one of the best single windows onto what Chinese geographers themselves consider important. English-language China-focused journals necessarily select for international audiences; this journal selects for its own national community of researchers, teachers, planners and students, and therefore shows the discipline's internal priorities — the human–land relationship as an organising idea, the weight given to resources and environment in a rapidly developing economy, and the close coupling between funded national programmes and published output. For researchers inside China, it remains what it has been since 1981: a top-tier national venue, certified in both the CSSCI and CSCD systems, in which a strong geography paper in Chinese reaches the whole discipline.

Reading the Journal as a Record of Chinese Geography

Because the journal has published continuously since 1981, a reader can use its contents as a dated record of how Chinese geography has changed. The earliest volumes belong to a period of rebuilding, when regional surveys, resource inventories and physical description were urgent national needs and when Chinese scholars were re-establishing contact with research abroad after a long interruption. The middle decades add the geography of reform: coastal development, special economic zones, rural industrialisation, migration on an enormous scale and the environmental costs that accompanied growth, from soil erosion and wetland loss to urban air and water stress. The most recent period is dominated by global-change science, ecological civilisation as a policy frame, carbon and ecosystem-services accounting, and the geospatial technologies that let geographers observe a continent-sized country almost in real time. Few single titles let a reader watch a national discipline move through all of those phases in its own language.

The journal's comprehensive design is what makes that record coherent. A specialist title would show only one thread; here, a physical study of wetland change in the Sanjiang Plain, a human-geography analysis of shrinking cities in the northeast, a remote-sensing method for land-cover classification and a review of human–land theory can appear under one ISSN, speaking to one another. That is deliberate. Chinese geography has traditionally held its physical and human branches together inside single institutes and single societies, and its flagship journals mirror that structure. The T1 classifications the journal holds simultaneously in physical geography, human geography and natural resources are the formal recognition of a breadth that generalist readers experience directly, issue by issue.

For graduate students, the journal also functions as an apprenticeship in the discipline's standards. Its dissertation abstracts announce new doctors' work to the national community; its reviews define what a newcomer must read; its discussions model how Chinese geographers argue about theory — for example about how the human–land relationship should be formalised, or how regional development should be measured. A student who reads this journal regularly learns not only results but the community's judgement about which questions matter, which evidence convinces and which methods are trusted. That formative role, shared with the country's other leading geography titles, is a large part of why the "three great journals" label carries weight inside China even though it has no formal standing outside it.

Practical Notes for Authors and Readers

• Identify the journal by ISSN 1000-0690 and Chinese title 地理科学; do not confuse it with Chinese Geographical Science (ISSN 1002-0063) or the Journal of Geographical Sciences (ISSN 1009-637X).
• Write in Chinese and follow the journal's current author instructions on its own site; the journal gives priority to innovative work combining geographical theory with application.
• Funded work is especially welcomed: results supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, State Key Laboratory foundations and national science and technology programmes are named in the scope.
• Choose the article type deliberately — research article, report, review, discussion, techniques and methods, dissertation abstract, book review or academic activity report.
• Any author charge not stated in the journal's current instructions is not publicly disclosed in the English material consulted for this profile; verify directly before submitting.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does 地理科学 mean? Literally "geographical science". The journal renders its name in English as Geographical Science and is also cited as Scientia Geographica Sinica.

When was it founded? In 1981, in Changchun, where its sponsoring Academy institute is based.

Who sponsors and publishes it? It is governed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, sponsored by the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology and the Geographical Society of China, and published by Science Press.

What is its ISSN? 1000-0690.

Where is it indexed? In China's core-journal lists and in CSSCI, CSCD and CSTPCD, among other services listed in the indexing section above, as well as in several international abstracting services.

Is it the same as Chinese Geographical Science? No. That is a separate English-language journal, ISSN 1002-0063, from the same institute. 地理科学 is the Chinese-language title.