Editors’ Introduction

The Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture’s odometer rolled over 100 years in 2020, and Landscape Journal is inching toward 500 research articles, a marker likely to be passed in the 40th volume. In mid-2019, CELA formed a task force to provide a vision for Landscape Journal that would define its future in the second century of CELA. The task force members are Robert Brown (Texas A&M University), Victoria Chanse (Victoria University of Wellington, NZ), Chris Ellis (University of Maryland), Ming-Han Li (Michigan State University), Louise Mozingo (University of California, Berkeley), and me. Landscape and Urban Planning’s coeditor-in-chief, Joan Iverson Nassauer, provided fundamental guidance to CELA for the task force. Her deep knowledge and experience is the basis for the task force recommendations. I am grateful that these accomplished scholars dedicated significant time and attention to envisioning Landscape Journal, always with a commitment to CELA and the Journal.

The task force delivered recommendations to the CELA board of directors in mid-2020. The recommendations are founded on a gratitude for the meaningful contributions of the editors, assistants, editorial boards, and University of Wisconsin Press staff who have sustained the journal and to the authors and reviewers who have created and tested the content that makes the journal a 38-year-long success.

The task force acknowledged the hefty leadership that Landscape Journal editorial teams have put forward in cultivating scholarly reporting and crafting an award-winning, highly finished, double-blind peer-reviewed journal. To continue to hold or advance Landscape Journal’s place among venues for landscape research, the Journal needs to increase the number of articles and issues published each year and the reach and impact of its content and title. At the same time, the Journal needs to do this faster and more openly to remain competitive with other research outlets. Publishing more issues on schedule will become the foundation for Landscape Journal’s impact factor, an increasingly important indicator for attracting top scholarship. More important, expanding Landscape Journal’s reach and influence will support the rigorous debate and application of journal content for new discoveries and knowledge.

Increasing the number of articles and issues— doubling to four issues per volume—and the impact factor will require a new structure to distribute the increase in effort. The task force is recommending that Landscape Journal strike a hierarchical editorial structure of an editor-in-chief (or coeditors; hereafter “editor-in-chief”), a small cadre of associate editors, and an editorial board that is global and diverse. All of these people will be highly engaged with the Journal’s development.

The editor-in-chief provides vision and leadership and tracks the Journal’s progress. The editor-in-chief selects associate editors and the expanded editorial board that consistently and regularly serves the Journal. The editor-in-chief develops policies and procedures that address diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) throughout all of the Journal’s activities (the task force has provided recommendations for DEI based on policies at scholarly publishers). The editor-in-chief will weigh how open scholarship affects the Journal’s reach and impact, supported in part by an editorial board drawn from countries and institutions with different expectations for openness.

Editorial board members support the direction and vision of the editor-in-chief, recruit articles, promote Landscape Journal with their colleagues, and—as established scholars—provide constructive, informed reviews that anchor the peer-review process. The task force recommends that editorial board members have defined terms of appointment and clear expectations for contributions to the Journal (e.g., providing consistent, timely peer reviews).

A central recommendation of the task force is that the editor-in-chief selects a small group of associate editors who are subject experts in the Journal’s scholarly tracks. Associate editors navigate a submission in their subject area from initial submission, selection of peer reviewers, management of reviews, correspondence with authors and reviewers, and recommendation to the editor-in-chief, who makes final disposition. Associate editors will lead a special issue during their term of appointment. They will be primary ambassadors for the Journal by leading publishing workshops at CELA...