PROJECT STATEMENT: The world’s premier peer-reviewed journal in landscape architecture, Landscape Journal has chronicled the evolution of academic discourse for over twenty-five years. Sponsored by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, Landscape Journal disseminates emerging scholarship relevant to academics and practitioners. On its silver anniversary, Landscape Journal launched new graphic design features and online services that enhance visibility and access to its content, fortify its intellectual value, and broaden the impact of the discipline around the world.
n.b. The twenty-fifth anniversary volume (2007) comprises the two print issues contained in the binder. The award submittal also includes a screenshot of the Highwire website (online content provider), as well as covers and tables of contents from the previous eight issues to provide context and comparison.
PROJECT NARRATIVE: About Landscape Journal. The purpose of Landscape Journal is to disseminate emerging research and scholarship relevant to both academics and practitioners in landscape architecture. Landscape Journal builds the profession by generating, testing, applying, and critiquing practical and theoretical ideas. Such work helps construct and legitimize the claims of landscape architecture as a specialized body of knowledge, a profession, and an art.
Background & Formation of Landscape Journal. The emerging environmental movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s contributed to public awareness of the importance of landscape architecture. Consequently, student enrollments in university-level landscape architecture programs experienced marked growth. Recognizing the need to develop a specialized base of knowledge, many programs began expanding instruction in disciplinary issues that supported both practice and theory. As a result, increased numbers of academics began to engage the process of academic research and publication. At first, such research was limited to a very few outlets, for example the proceedings of the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA), or a few small interdisciplinary journals. Because refereed journals based on the scientific model of blind review did not exist in landscape architecture, this dilemma became especially pronounced when landscape architecture educators were considered for tenure and promotion. Academic review committees and university administrators demanded evidence that candidates could produce refereed publications equivalent to those that defined other academic disciplines.
During the 1970s, members of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) repeatedly voiced the need for a respected refereed journal. These concerns culminated in the conference theme for the 1980 annual meeting, “Research in Landscape Architecture,” organized by the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Organizers proceeded to highlight emerging directions in landscape research for the University of Wisconsin Press, who immediately saw the possibilities for a refereed journal in landscape architecture and offered the financial and organizational resources to carry it out. With the support and collaboration of CELA’s executive committee, Landscape Journal was established in 1981, and Volume 1:1 appeared in Spring 1982.
Circulation, Community & Authorship. Landscape Journal is a semi-annual publication (twice yearly) listed in the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, Architectural Publications Index, Environmental Issues & Policy Index (EBSCO), and Garden Literature Index, among others. Currently, Landscape Journal has more than 1000 subscribers, with a typical print run of 1200-1400 copies. About half its subscribers are CELA members (many of whom are also ASLA members), slightly more than 300 are institutions (libraries, indexes, and archives), and the remaining 200 or so are individuals and professional offices. Typically, hard copies of the Journal are mailed directly to subscribers, although in future we expect more will choose online-only content.
Our standard editorial practice is to solicit ‘double-blind’ peer reviews (where both author and reviewer are anonymous) from established scholars, methods experts, content area specialists, and/or practitioners, and then advise authors on the development or modification of their work. The peer review process for Landscape Journal has gained a reputation for being rigorous, demanding, and thorough. At its best, peer review provides constructive collegial criticism by a reflective community, a service for established scholars as well as novice researchers. One of the chief values of such critical mentoring is to foster a culture of applied scholarship in a young field.
As a result, over time, refereed journals such as Landscape Journal help build a valid, reliable, and coherent body of professional knowledge from a range of approaches, values, and methods—from practical applied research to case studies to theoretical essays (representative tables of contents provided). Most Journal articles are written by educators in landscape architecture and related disciplines (e.g. geography, architecture, planning, natural resources, etc.). Significantly, about ten percent of all published articles are contributed by practicing landscape architects and public sector officials, while another five percent are from independent scholars, researchers, and artists. We endeavor to recruit more articles that represent investigative partnerships between academics and practitioners.
The Anniversary Issues. Although the signature black and white cover and its bold typography have been maintained (compare to covers from previous issues), the twenty-fifth anniversary issue inaugurates a heavier, coated paper for color printing, and a redesigned page template for body text that condenses three columns into two, and presents more readable fonts. To improve the impact and convenience of the publication, special features such as online access to current and back issues, technology reviews, full text and keyword searchability, and citation alerts have also been added. An archive of back issues (to 2001), available through the online content provider Highwire, offers subscribers advance contents for upcoming issues, “most-read” articles, and citation cross-referencing in related journals (see web screenshot in binder).
With contributions from practitioners and academics from both inside and outside landscape architecture, the Spring issue of the anniversary volume (26:1) highlights “Race, Space & the Destabilization of Practice” in landscape architecture, a topic of vital importance that has been largely misunderstood or ignored by landscape architects, and equally under-represented in the pages of Landscape Journal. The Fall issue (26:2) features a smaller theme group on “Modern Manifestos” in landscape architecture, along with an eclectic set of articles on topics ranging from the sacred groves of Greece, to modern lifestyle centers, and a Civil-War themed subdivision in suburban Ohio. This characteristic mixture of themes and topics is crucial to maintaining the liberal value of Landscape Journal to the field of landscape architecture. Over the course of its twenty-five year history, prized special issues on Nature, Form and Meaning (1988), Landscape and the Avant-Garde (1991), Women, Land and Design (1994), and Eco-Revelatory Landscapes (1998), have recently been joined by special issues on Cross-Cultural Education (2005) and Metropolitan Ecology (Spring 2008), to mirror an evolving sense of mission in the field.
Reputation & Impact. Immediately accepted by the academic establishment in North America as the primary research publication for landscape architecture, in 1983, the ASLA recognized the unique contributions of the publication to the broader discipline with an Award of Merit in Communications. Although LJ was conceived principally to serve academic landscape architects, the editorial focus has gradually shifted to recognize the needs of scholarly practitioners—members of the profession who consume and produce research through their professional practices. Increasingly, the results of applied practical research serve as teaching tools in the classroom as practitioners begin to partner with academics on underdeveloped areas of research.
Landscape Journal remains the sole refereed outlet for landscape architecture research in North America. Its standards for scholarly rigor and distinction have helped to establish LJ as the model for newer academic publications in landscape architecture now springing up in China, Europe, and the Pacific Rim. To help promote the continued vitality of academic discourse in landscape architecture, therefore, editors, advocates, and publishers of Landscape Journal are cooperating with several sister organizations and their publications, such as the American Society of Landscape Architects (LAM), American Collegiate Schools of Architecture (JAE), Environmental Design Research Association (Places), and the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (JoLA). University of Wisconsin Press has recently agreed to make abstracts from Landscape Journal available in the bi-lingual Chinese Journal of Landscape Architecture, and to become an educational partner with the Cultural Landscape Foundation (Washington DC). Other efforts are underway to promote the translation of abstracts and articles from Landscape Journal into other languages, and to make this valuable archive of landscape research available online to emerging programs in other countries, to ‘grow’ the impact of the profession worldwide.
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PROJECT RESOURCES |
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Owner Credits—CELA:
Executive Director: Janet Singer
2006-07 Executive Council: Christopher Ellis (University of Michigan); William Grundman (Iowa State University); Mary Myers (Temple University); Patrick Taylor (University of Texas at Arlington); Alf Simon (University of New Mexico); et al.
Editorial Credits:
Editor in Chief: M. Elen Deming, ASLA (State University of New York, College of Environmental Science & Forestry)
Guest Editors for Volume 26: Dianne Harris (University of Illinois) guest-edited theme articles for “Race, Space & the Destabilization of Practice” (26:1); Dorothée Imbert (Harvard GSD) guest-edited theme articles for “Modern Manifestos in Landscape Architecture” (26:2)
Consulting and Past Editors: Arnold Alanen and Darrel Morrison (founding co-editors, University of Wisconsin-Madison); Robert Riley (past editor, University of Illinois); Kenneth Helphand and Robert Melnick (past co-editors, University of Oregon); James Palmer (past co-editor, SUNY ESF)
Past Assistant Editors: George Thompson (University of Wisconsin-Madison); Brenda Brown (University of Illinois); Rene Kane (University of Oregon); Stephanie Buller and Stephen Kearney (SUNY ESF)
Review Editors for Volume 26: Dan Nadenicek (Clemson University); Alan Tate (University of Manitoba); Madis Pihlak (Pennsylvania State University)
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Editorial Staff for Volume 26: Kate Auwaerter, Managing Editor; Marcy Denker and Jessi Lyons, Assistant Editors; Brenda Bolliver, Editorial Assistant (all SUNY ESF)
Editorial Board: Ian Bishop (University of Melbourne); Patrick Condon (University of British Columbia); Donna Erickson (Missoula, Montana); Mark Francis (University of California—Davis); Paul Gobster (USDA Forest Service, Chicago); Peter Jacobs (University of Montreal); Niall Kirkwood (Harvard GSD); Robert Melnick (University of Oregon); Elizabeth Meyer (University of Virginia); Joan Nassauer (University of Michigan); Laurie Olin, Olin Partnership, Philadelphia); Lynda Schneekloth (University of Buffalo); Anne Spirn (MIT); Fritz Steiner (University of Texas); Carl Steinitz (Harvard GSD); Marc Treib (University of California—Berkeley)
Publishing & Design Credits:
University of Wisconsin Press: Steve Miller, John DeLaine and Pamela Wilson, Managers of Journals Division; Susan Kau, Production Manager; Ken Sullivan, Marketing Manager
Design & Printing Services: Ken Morrison, Graphic Designer; Mira Nenonen, Graphic Designer (for anniversary issues); Graphic Composition, Inc., Typesetter; The Sheridan Press, Printer
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