A New ICA Journal

The profile of ICA, which was promoted in 2014 by elevation to full ICSU membership, will be further enhanced in 2015 by the establishment of its own scientific journal. The decision to go ahead with this important step has been based on several years’ analysis of the existing publication landscape of cartographic journals, discussion with the ICA Commissions, assessment of the demands and needs of academia and scientific organisations, and the overall acknowledgement of the importance of a scientific journal for a major international organisation. The journal will be called the International Journal of Cartography, with editors-in-chief William Cartwright and Anne Ruas, and Taylor & Francis will be the professional publication partners. The editorial and publishing teams are working hard to be able to launch the first issue in early 2015.

The overall aims of the journal are to:

• offer more options for those who wish to publish their scientific work in an internationally recognised journal and, in this way, respond to an increasing demand within academia worldwide for career promotions

• provide a platform for reporting on new findings, insights and developments concerning scientific cartography and GIScience and thus strengthen the foundation and visibility of our domain to cater for the entire ICA community, by publishing work on topics ranging from service-oriented cartography, web mapping, geovisualisation and generalisation, to the history of cartography, cartographic heritage, maps and society, and art and cartography;

• equally address two pillars of the ICA: cartography and GIScience. It is hoped to attract authors doing research in cartography and GIScience to publish in a journal of cartography and GIScience rather than in any journal of whatever domain (and there are many). A scientific domain is very much defined by its main output media, and strengthening these media will help to contribute to enlargement of the discipline and increased visibility.

It can be noted that there are already many respected and well-established cartographic journals around the world. Most of these address their ‘home market’, publishing papers primarily in the national language. Meanwhile, the three prime English-language journals – Cartographica, Cartography and Geographic Information Science, and The Cartographic Journal – have a long-standing and most successful history of being close partners of ICA, for example in producing numerous special issues for recent International Cartographic Conferences. The success of these journals, and the large number of articles on cartographic topics in other journals in neighbouring disciplines, have convinced ICA that cartography needs a further high-quality record which will proactively provide a vehicle for new and additional research through publications and relevant outcomes. The enhancement of the range of advanced academic and research publications will ensure increased acknowledgment of the relevance of cartography, its role in the geospatial domain, and a raising of esteem of all cartographic journals, including the raising of impact factors. Potential authors and readers are encouraged to visit the new journal’s website [http://www.edmgr.com/tica/] to contribute to and support this new vehicle.