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The scientific project

Translated by Alvin Harberts

Objectives of the journal

Geography makes us more open to the world, to its sensitive and intelligible diversity, to its lines of force and fractures, to its predictable and unpredictable evolutions. The discipline has developed original scientific methods and produces renewed analyses to respond to our curiosities and perplexities. The European journal of Geography Cybergeo widely disseminates all this research production, without bias of school of thought or theme.

The journal, created in 1996, has from the outset been exclusively electronic and open access, in order to allow faster and more direct communication between authors and readers. With the aim of broadening the exchange of ideas, methods and results, it publishes in all of the main European languages. It guarantees a good scientific level of the articles by submitting them to an international reading committee. The double-anonymised peer review respects the highest scientific and ethical criteria. An important part of our editorial policy is to help authors to promote and disseminate their articles at the highest level of international scientific journals. This requirement of quality is achieved at the price of an important work of improvement suggestions from our readers. Transparency in the production of knowledge and reproducibility of experiences are guarantees of the relevance and cumulative nature of the knowledge thus transmitted. It is also in this spirit that the journal has recently created a Model papers and a Data papers sections.

A high visibility is ensured to the publications by the care given to the content of the articles and the multilingual metadata. The journal aims to be a networking tool for the geographers' community and has also become a tool for external visibility: in the year 2019, nearly articles were downloaded nearly 2 million times worldwide. Since its launch in 1996, the journal has been referenced in all major international databases. In the interests of distribution and interactivity, it is also present on Twitter (@RevueCybergeo).

Cybergeo aims to meet the specific needs of scientific communication, for rapid exchanges of information, immediate reactions to reading an article, "hot" debates on current events in the subject area, long-term discussions, clarifying the status of an issue, proposals for results or documents, interactive documents or models. In this perspective, it publishes not only scientific articles, but also a offers a blog, Cybergeo Conversation which is open to opinion pieces (Debates section) and more atypical texts in various formats (E-Topics section). As long as it is possible, Cybergeo will be free and open access, both for readers and authors. Since 2012, it has adopted the Freemium programme proposed by OpenEdition. This model aims to perpetuate open access journals without any cost for authors. The resources come from subscriptions. The principles of Freemium are as follows: all html pages remain open access, but pdf, e-pub formats and associated services are reserved for subscribers (academic or individual subscriptions). The journal is also supported by the CNRS.

Evaluation of articles

Upon submission to Cybergeo, the author agrees that the article is an original and will not be submitted to any other journal. The author also agrees to make all documents, text, and illustrations anonymous. Articles are submitted anonymously to the opinion of a pre-selection commission which carries out an overall verification of their formal conformity to the expectations of a scientific journal. Non-scientific texts, or texts that are out of scope, or that are not in the international scientific debate, or that do not have sufficient potential to be considered for publication, are excluded. On average, a little less than one text submitted out of three is thus rejected.

Admitted articles are proposed anonymously to the Cybergeo readers' committee. Each article is evaluated by at least two readers. After discussion in the editorial committee, a summary of these opinions (acceptance or rejection, requests for modifications or additions) is communicated to the author, who submits a modified version within a maximum period of six months. In this double-blind evaluation process, the readers, all volunteers, adhere to the major principle of our editorial policy, which is to help authors to promote and disseminate their work by placing it at the highest level in the debates that animate world geography. This can sometimes involve several rounds of revision with authors. The rejection rate for submissions is about 50%.

Once reviewed by the reviewers and translators, the accepted papers are then posted online and are freely accessible. The average time between submission and publication is approximately seven months.

Titles and abstracts of articles written in the language of the article and in English by the authors are translated by the journal into Spanish and sometimes Chinese. The best articles are selected periodically, and the journal offers authors the opportunity to publish translations in other languages.

Particular care is taken to ensure the quality and readability of the metadata (titles, abstracts and keywords) and their translation. A guide to good practice is made available to authors.

For more information, please consult the note to authors.

Discussion of articles

The interest of the electronic medium is to facilitate the exchange of information or reactions to the articles put online. If you wish to make comments on an article, you can send them directly to the author's e-mail address or to the editorial secretariat. This procedure is particularly useful for pointing out errors or omissions of important references on the subject matter. The editorial committee will make sure to discuss with the author any possible modifications or additions to his or her article.

If you wish to react directly to an article, you can do so on social networks and more specifically on Twitter. If you wish to develop a discussion of general interest on the subject addressed by an author, you can also intervene in this sense on the Cybergeo Conversation blog to start a debate. A summary of the interventions concerning your question can then be made by the person in charge of the section and possibly put online after the article.

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