Indonesian Journal on Geoscience

About Indonesian Journal on Geoscience

Indonesian Journal on Geoscience — Journal Profile

The Indonesian Journal on Geoscience (IJOG) is the international, English-language geoscience journal of the Geological Agency of Indonesia, the national geological survey body within the country's Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources. Published from Bandung, West Java, the journal carries original research across geology, geophysics, geochemistry, geodesy, geography and soil science, with a natural centre of gravity in the geology of Indonesia and Southeast Asia — one of the most tectonically active, volcanically productive and resource-rich regions on Earth. Its print ISSN is 2355-9314 and its electronic ISSN is 2355-9306, the pair recorded on this JournalsWorld record and printed on the journal's own masthead. The journal appears three times a year, publishes at least thirty articles annually according to its own editorial statement, and is financially supported by the Geological Agency, which means authors are not charged an article processing charge — the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) record for the journal confirms that it has no APC. For earth scientists working on arc volcanism, subduction-zone seismicity, geothermal systems, sedimentary basins, mineral and energy resources, or geological hazards anywhere in the Indonesian archipelago and its wider region, IJOG is one of the most direct routes into print under the imprint of the national survey itself.

History and identity

The journal's own published history explains that IJOG began life as the Indonesian Journal of Geology (Jurnal Geologi Indonesia, ISSN 1907-2953) in 2006. In its first two years the predecessor appeared four times a year, some of its papers were still written in Indonesian, and it initially struggled to attract strong submissions because it had not yet gained formal accreditation from the Indonesian authorities. Once accreditation was achieved, the journal's standing rose quickly, and its editors describe it as having become a prestigious and credible scientific publication at national level. In 2009 the journal's management began cooperating with related institutions through shared editorial boards in the earth sciences across Indonesia, partly to widen the pool of qualified papers and partly to guard against plagiarism through data exchange among board members.

The decisive change came in the early 2010s. In 2012, earth scientists from East and Southeast Asia and from several western countries were invited to join the editorial board, and the journal was relaunched under its present name, the Indonesian Journal on Geoscience, as a deliberately international publication written entirely in English. The first volume under the new title appeared in 2014. The relaunched journal appears three times a year rather than four — a pace its editors link to the more competitive international field it now operates in — and it is managed day to day by senior geologists from a range of subdisciplines and countries who, in the journal's own words, are responsible for its quality. The Geological Agency of Indonesia stands behind the title as publisher and funder, which gives IJOG an institutional permanence that many small society journals cannot match.

That institutional identity shapes the journal's character. IJOG is not a commercial title chasing volume; it is the house journal of a national geological survey, and its pages mix survey-generated science — regional mapping, hazard assessment, resource evaluation — with university research from Indonesia and abroad. Papers in recent issues range from seismic hazard modelling for Lampung in Sumatra, built on magnitude conversion, seismicity smoothing and area-source modelling, to full-waveform inversion in synthetic geological models, slope-stability work on metasedimentary rocks in Sabah, Malaysia, and petrographic and mineral-chemistry studies of the Batu Hijau porphyry copper-gold deposit. The spread is characteristic: rigorous regional case studies, methods with direct application to Indonesian terrain, and resource and hazard science of immediate public value.

Scope and subject coverage

The journal's focus-and-scope statement opens its pages to papers in geology, geophysics, geochemistry, geodesy (rendered "geodetics" in the journal's own statement), geography and soil science. In practice, published work clusters in several recognisable areas. Geological and geochemical studies address the composition, structure and evolution of rock formations, mineralisation, reservoir characterisation and the geochemistry of rocks and sediments. Volcanology and seismology form a second pillar — unsurprising for a journal published in a country that sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire — covering volcanic activity, tectonic movement, earthquake analysis and the hazard and risk assessment that follows from them. Environmental and engineering geology addresses the interaction between geological materials and the built and natural environment, including landslides, groundwater management and the sustainable exploitation of resources. Geospatial and remote-sensing applications use mapping and monitoring tools to track geological and environmental change. Palaeontology and ichnology contribute work on fossils and trace fossils and what they reveal about past environments. Hydrogeology and geothermal studies — the latter of particular national importance given Indonesia's geothermal potential — round out the regular coverage.

Prospective authors should note the journal's regional logic. IJOG welcomes work from outside Indonesia, and its board is international, but its comparative advantage and its readership lie in Southeast Asian geoscience. A methods paper gains strength here when it is demonstrated on Indonesian or regional data; a purely local study gains strength when its wider significance — for arc systems, equatorial weathering, tropical geomorphology or hazard practice — is drawn out explicitly. Review articles and case studies sit alongside original research, and special thematic content appears from time to time, for example on seismic hazard preparation.

Publisher and editorial organisation

The publisher is the Geological Agency (Badan Geologi) of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources of the Republic of Indonesia, headquartered in Bandung at Jalan Diponegoro No. 57 — the same address long associated with the Center for Geological Survey, whose staff have historically formed the core of the journal's editorial operation. Editorial responsibility rests with senior geologists drawn from several subdisciplines and several countries, reflecting the internationalisation drive of 2012. Because the Agency funds the journal, the operation is insulated from the commercial pressures that push some open-access titles toward volume-driven acceptance; the editors' stated challenge is the opposite one — maintaining quality and credibility while attracting enough strong English-language papers to fill three issues a year with at least thirty articles.

Peer review and editorial handling follow the journal's online submission system on its official site. Manuscripts arrive in English, are assessed for fit and quality, and are sent for expert review within the relevant subdiscipline. The journal's history statement is candid that writing in English raises the bar for regional authors, while also noting that the credit Indonesian academics earn from an international English-language publication is correspondingly higher — a frank acknowledgement of the incentive structure the journal operates within.

Metrics and standing

Readers should interpret IJOG's indicators in the context of a regional, agency-published journal. OpenAlex (source S2738681991, resolved through the ISSN endpoint and checked for this profile) records 674 works for the journal, cited 2,824 times in total, with an OpenAlex h-index of 20, an i10-index of 78 and a two-year mean citedness of about 0.62. SCImago-based reporting (via SciJournal's journal database, drawing on Scopus data) gives a SCImago Journal Rank of 0.177 for 2025 and an h-index of 13, with the journal sitting in the fourth quartile of its Earth and Planetary Sciences category in recent SCImago listings — the quartile recorded on this JournalsWorld record. The two h-index figures differ because the databases count different document and citation universes; neither is an error, and both are reported here with their sources so readers can judge. Citation-based impact estimates reported by SciJournal have risen over the decade, from around 0.20 in 2015 to 0.670 in 2025, suggesting a journal whose visibility is growing from a modest base as its English-language, open-access archive accumulates.

For an Indonesian or Southeast Asian earth scientist, these numbers understate the journal's practical value. IJOG papers are read by the survey and hazard-management community that actually uses regional geoscience — the audience that commissions mapping, runs volcano observatories and plans geothermal development. A paper on slope stability, groundwater or seismic hazard published here reaches practitioner-readers that a higher-ranked but region-blind journal may never touch.

Indexing and access

The journal is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), which records the Geological Agency as publisher and confirms that the journal levies no article processing charge. Its presence in SCImago reflects coverage in Scopus. Full texts are published open access on the journal's official site, so readers anywhere can read and download articles without a subscription, and the archive runs continuously from the 2014 relaunch back through the predecessor title's run from 2006. Indexing status changes over time, so authors who need a specific database for promotion or funding purposes should confirm the current listing directly with the database concerned before submitting.

How to submit

Submissions are made through the journal's official website, where the current author guidelines, formatting requirements and editorial contacts are maintained. Manuscripts must be in English. Authors should prepare work that fits the stated scope — geology, geophysics, geochemistry, geodesy, geography or soil science — present regional data or methods to an international standard, and support hazard, resource or environmental claims with the underlying observations the journal's survey readership will expect. Because the journal publishes three issues a year with a target of at least thirty articles annually, well-prepared papers that match an active theme face a realistic path to print. Article processing charges are not levied, per the journal's DOAJ record; if any other fee were ever introduced it would be announced on the journal's own site, which is the only authoritative source for such details.

Similar journals

Readers and authors comparing outlets for Southeast Asian geoscience may also consider the Indonesian Journal of Earth Sciences, JGEET (Journal of Geoscience, Engineering, Environment and Technology), the Jambura Geoscience Review, and Berita Sedimentologi for Indonesian sedimentary geology, alongside regional titles such as the Bulletin of the Geological Society of Malaysia and international earth-science journals with strong Southeast Asia coverage. Each differs in publisher, pace and audience; IJOG's distinguishing marks are its national-survey publisher, its no-fee open-access model and its explicit brief to internationalise Indonesian geoscience.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Indonesian Journal on Geoscience open access? Yes. Articles are published open access on the journal's official site, and its DOAJ record confirms that no article processing charge is levied.

What are the journal's ISSNs? Print ISSN 2355-9314 and electronic ISSN 2355-9306. Its predecessor, the Indonesian Journal of Geology, carried ISSN 1907-2953.

Who publishes the journal? The Geological Agency (Badan Geologi), Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Indonesia, based in Bandung.

How often does it appear? Three issues a year, with at least thirty articles annually according to the journal's editorial statement.

What subjects does it cover? Geology, geophysics, geochemistry, geodesy, geography and soil science — including volcanology, seismology, hydrogeology, geothermal studies, palaeontology, engineering and environmental geology, and remote sensing.

What language are papers published in? English. The predecessor title published some papers in Indonesian, but the relaunched journal is an English-language international publication.

The regional setting the journal serves

To understand what IJOG publishes, it helps to understand where it is published. Indonesia stretches along the junction of the Eurasian, Indo-Australian and Pacific plates, and its geology is dominated by active subduction, island-arc volcanism, frequent large earthquakes and tsunamis, and rapid tropical weathering of young volcanic and sedimentary terrains. The country hosts well over a hundred active volcanoes, sits on some of the world's richest porphyry copper-gold and coal provinces, holds major oil and gas basins in Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan and the east, and possesses geothermal resources that rank among the largest anywhere. Every one of those endowments is also a research programme, and the Geological Agency — through its centres for geological survey, for volcanology and geological hazard mitigation, for groundwater and environmental geology, and for mineral, coal and geothermal resources — is the state body charged with mapping, monitoring and understanding them.

IJOG is where much of that institutional science meets the open literature. Survey scientists publish mapping and resource assessments alongside university researchers, and the journal's contents therefore function as a running record of Indonesian geoscience priorities: hazard work after major eruptions and earthquakes, geothermal exploration as national energy policy pushes renewable baseload, groundwater studies for fast-growing cities, and mineral-system research in the archipelago's metallogenic belts. International readers use the journal the other way round — as a window into primary data from a region whose rocks, volcanoes and basins are otherwise documented mainly in Indonesian-language reports and grey literature. That bridging role, from national survey science to the international English-language record, is the journal's founding rationale and still its clearest claim on a reader's attention.

Inside the journal: what gets published

A typical IJOG issue mixes several kinds of contribution. Original research articles form the backbone: field-based studies of stratigraphy, structure and petrology; geophysical surveys and modelling, from seismic hazard analysis to inversion of potential-field and electromagnetic data; geochemical investigations of rocks, fluids and ores; and applied studies in hydrogeology, engineering geology and environmental assessment. The 2026 issues illustrate the range — a seismic hazard study for Lampung combining magnitude conversion, seismicity smoothing and area-source modelling to support preparedness planning; a methodological paper on three-dimensional full-waveform inversion in synthetic geological models; and, in earlier volumes, slope-stability analysis of metasedimentary rocks in Ranau, Sabah, and a widely cited mineral-chemistry study of magmatic and hydrothermal biotite in the Batu Hijau porphyry copper-gold deposit, which used biotite halogen and oxide chemistry to track fluid evolution through a major ore system.

Review and synthesis papers appear alongside primary research, and the journal also publishes case studies whose value lies in documenting a specific Indonesian locality, deposit, aquifer or hazard event to a standard that later workers can build on. Themed groupings of papers around a shared topic — seismic hazard work and national survey programmes among them — are a recurring feature of the journal's tables of contents. Across all article types, the editorial expectation is the same: clear English, data presented openly enough to be checked and reused, and conclusions that speak beyond the immediate field area to the wider arc, basin or hazard community.

For authors: preparing a competitive submission

Several practical points follow from the journal's identity. First, fit matters more than fashion: a carefully documented study of an Indonesian formation, volcano, aquifer or ore occurrence is squarely on brief, while a generic modelling exercise with no regional grounding must justify why this journal, rather than a methods outlet, is its natural home. Second, data transparency carries unusual weight with this readership — survey reviewers will look for coordinates, stratigraphic context, analytical conditions and uncertainty statements, and papers that supply them move more smoothly. Third, because the journal appears three times a year with a published target of at least thirty articles annually, themed and special content can absorb strong papers in clusters; authors working on an active theme, such as seismic hazard preparedness, may find a receptive moment. Fourth, the absence of an article processing charge makes IJOG one of the few no-fee, Scopus-covered, English-language outlets in regional geoscience — a significant consideration for authors without grant support for publication fees. Finally, authors should write for the journal's dual audience: specialists who know the Indonesian terrain intimately, and international readers who do not. Locality names, formation names and agency terminology should be introduced with enough context that a reader in another arc system can follow the argument.

Reading, citing and using the archive

The full archive is freely readable on the journal's official site, including the predecessor title's volumes from 2006 onward, which preserve early work — some of it originally in Indonesian — on hydrocarbon source rocks, regional mapping and mineral occurrences that remains cited today. Articles carry received, revised, approved and online-publication dates on their first pages, together with the journal's ISSNs and the Geological Agency imprint, which makes the version of record easy to identify and cite. The standard citation form is the journal's full title, Indonesian Journal on Geoscience, with volume, issue and page range. Libraries and indexers distinguish the current title from its predecessor by ISSN: cite pre-2014 material under the Indonesian Journal of Geology (ISSN 1907-2953) and material from 2014 onward under the present title and its ISSN pair.