Country: Romania, China – City: Bucharest – Address:
Publishing Geography Today: Open Access, Inequalities, and the Future of Scientific Writing
Description:
The GeoNight Event proposed by the Geography & Sustainability (GEOSUS) Working Group of the IGU Young and Early Career Geographers (YECG) Commission aims to open a timely and critical discussion on the realities of scientific writing and publishing in Geography, especially from the perspective of young researchers working in diverse national, institutional, and funding contexts.
The target audience includes early-career researchers, PhD students, and young professionals in Geography and related environmental sciences, as well as senior scholars, editors, and members of the IGU community interested in current transformations in academic publishing.
The discussion will be enriched through contributions from approximately five invited speakers, the majority of whom are university professors or senior researchers affiliated with prestigious academic institutions worldwide, as well as editors of international scientific journals. The invited guests are selected primarily from members of the IGU Board and Chairs of various IGU Commissions, ensuring both scientific authority and global representativeness. The discussion will be guided by the chairs of the IGU YECG GEOSUS Working Group.
To ensure global accessibility, the GeoNight event will be prepared as a series of short pre-recorded video interventions assembled into a coherent report-style feature, with an estimated total duration of approximately 60 minutes. Within this format, invited experts will respond to a set of guiding questions aligned with the event theme. This approach will allow participants worldwide to access the content across time zones and will support broad dissemination and engagement beyond live attendance limitations.
Main objectives:
The event will address three major challenges shaping academic careers today:
(1) the growing dominance of open access publishing, where pressure for rapid publication often conflicts with the time needed for robust research development and personal well-being, while publication fees remain unaffordable for many early-career scholars;
(2) the increasing expectation to produce highly technical and quantitative outputs, frequently requiring advanced infrastructure, software, and equipment that are not equally accessible across countries, and which may undervalue field-based, qualitative, or conceptual research; and
(3) the importance of protecting linguistic diversity in scientific writing, and valuing regional or local journals that play a key role in knowledge exchange beyond high-impact English-language outlets.
Event language: English
The event will be: Only online
Link : https://drive.google.com/file/d/14mX_5JLjwSpekXdvVCHWqb5fosoVcTpw/view
Reference person: Gabriela Morosanu-Mitoseriu & Xutong Wu – Role or function: Researcher – Reference organization: Institute of Geography of the Romanian Academy/ Beijing Normal University
Those who organize are: Academics, IGU Young and Early Career Geographers Commission and GEOSUS Working Group
Estimated starting time (local time):
Expected duration: around 1 hour
Event program: it will be displayed here as soon as possible
GeoNight code: 2026168
