The RGS-IBG core scholarly publishing portfolio is comprises four journals (Area, Geo: Geography and Environment, The Geographical Journal, and Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers) and the RGS-IBG book series. Along with the Royal Meteorological Society, the RGS-IBG is also associated with the Wiley title WIREs Climate Change. Each year papers published in Society journals are downloaded more than one million times worldwide.
The Society seeks to ensure that there is a high-quality publishing option within the RGS-IBG publishing portfolio that is appropriate for every geographer, recognising that researchers have differential access to resources, have different needs and expectations, and face different pressures according to their career stage, access to funding, institutional context, and geographical location.
Geo: Geography and Environment was launched in 2014 to offer a high-quality peer-reviewed fully open access publishing option that is compliant with funder mandates. Area, The GJ, and Transactions offer both subscription and open access publishing routes. All RGS-IBG journals will consider for review papers that have been made available on not-for-profit pre-print servers. Authors and subscribers are also able to share read-only version of papers that have been published behind a paywall with those who might not otherwise have access by generating a link on Wiley Online Library.
The Society is committed to offering a plurality of publishing options to enable researchers to reach the widest possible audience with their work and to maximise access to scholarly content published by the RGS-IBG titles.
The RGS-IBG scholarly publishing portfolio is currently published by Wiley. The contract and tendering process for the Society academic publishing portfolio is competitive and overseen by the Society’s Council. Our existing publishing contract with Wiley is for 2019-2023. The Society works with a commercial publisher because a major publisher provides services to researchers, libraries, and funders that an organisation the size of the RGS-IBG could not deliver independently in a sustainable manner.
The RGS-IBG publishing portfolio is critical to the Society’s mission to advance geographical knowledge. Working with a commercial publisher helps ensure that the Society can offer a range of high-quality publishing options that meet current and future researcher needs in a financially sustainable manner. The Society uses income received from the publishing contract to support the delivery of the journals and book series, and to support the Society’s charitable activities of advocating for geography and geographers.