"International" or "Anglo-American" journals of geography?

Many scholars question the purportedly international character of the most prestigious journals of geography, particularly those concerned with human geography. These, in their opinion, are dominated by British and American geography. The goal of this article is to assess the affiliation distribution of the authors of articles and the editorial boards of selected geographical publications and to compare the results with previous assessments of a similar kind. The analysis pertains to those geographical journals that received the highest impact rating from the Institute for Scientific Information. The results confirm those obtained by previous studies; over 70% of all articles published in highly respected geographical journals were written by authors representing British and American academic institutions. This trend carries over to the structure of the respective publications' editorial boards and staff, also Anglo-American in their majority. It would appear, as is argued, that maintaining such a structure creates numerous threats to the development of a global discourse in the area of geography. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.