Preparing your Paper for CaGIS

Workshop Objectives

• Learn about the journal
  • Timeline for review, acceptance rate
• Prepare your manuscript
  • research (new methodology)
  • review
  • essay (vision)
• Reproducibility and replicability
• High-quality maps and visuals

Overview of the CaGIS Journal

• Official publication of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society
  • [‘…Society supports research, education, and practices that improve the understanding, creation, analysis, and use of maps and geographic information…’]
  • [‘…journal implements the objectives of the Society…’]
    • articles –> innovative research in cartography and geographic information science.

History

• 1974 : 1990: The American Cartographer
• 1990 : 1999: Cartography and Geographic Information Systems
• 1999 : now: Cartography and Geographic Information Science
• 6 issues per year, ~6-8 articles per issue: ~40 articles/year

Some statistics

Impact factor since 2015

Some statistics

Number of downloads since 2015

Some statistics

Geography of downloads since 2015

Editorial board

Process for publication

procedure for journal review

Acceptance rate

Acceptance rate

Type of papers

• research (most common)
• review
• essay/vision

The structure of your paper (research)

• Title/abstract/keywords
• Introduction: introduce the problem and motivate your paper
  • why do we need this type of research
  • contributions to existing work in the journal or nearby outlets
• A well explained methodology, with testable hypothesis
• New method (e.g. color scheme) –> surveys with subjects
• Discuss your results (have stakeholders been involved?)
• Future research

Testing with participants

• Typically in the US, needs to go through IRB

A study on the aptitude of color hue, value, and transparency for geographic relevance encoding in mobile maps. CaGIS 2023

The structure of your paper (review)

• Title/abstract/keywords
• Introduction: introduce the problem and motivate your paper
  • why do we need this review?
    • is the field moving quickly?
    • is it part of a Ph.D. student first chapter?
• How is the review conducted? PubMed, Google Search?
• Future directions / call for research

The structure of your paper (review)

Example of a literature review/essay

Lines between essays and reviews are blurry

• Senior scientists or rapidly emerging scholars are likely to submit essays.

The structure of your paper (essay)

• You will need some lit. review to ground your research
• Approach could be:
  • Analytical and Reflective on different perspectives, theories
  • Argumentative: present or defend a particular argument or viewpoint
  • Critical Evaluation: evaluate existing knowledge, identifying gaps, inconsistencies, or areas needing further research.
  • Theoretical Focus: exploring conceptual frameworks and their implications.
• Directions for research

The order of authors is important

• Generally, the individual who conducted the majority of the work, should be first.
• However, in some domains (public health) the adviser goes last.
• Sandwich authors when contribution is limited
• Removing authors on R1, R2 is not a good strategy
• Author for correspondance

What is Reproducibility & Replicability?

When the same analysis steps performed on the same dataset produce the same answer. (Turing Way)

by Scriberia for The Turing Way community (CC-BY 4.0)

How do we make our research reproducible? - FAIR:

R&R (again)

Codes!

• Some journals & conferences ask you to submit code
• Anyone should be able to do reproduce your research and benefit from it.
• If you do analysis in ArcGIS Pro, you need ArcGIS Pro to recreate that analysis

Preparing flowcharts (1/3)

• Importance of replicability; a flowchart can really help.

Preparing flowcharts (2/3)

Preparing flowcharts (3/3)

Preparing maps (1/2)

• Figures should be in TIFF or EPS format.
  • Formats such as GIF, JPEG, PDF are not acceptable
  • Images produced in or embedded in PowerPoint / Word not acceptable
• Resolution must be 600 dpi.

Preparing maps (2/2)

• Multipart figures should be labelled a), b), c), etc.
• Do not embed captions within the figure
• When exporting to EPS or TIFF, all fonts should be embedded
• Myriad Pro (sans serif) font is used for figure captions
• All figures can be color (there is no additional charge for color)

Example (how to improve?) (1/2)

Map Doctor Guide, Journal of Maps

Example (how to improve?) (2/2)

Maps - example of effective design (1/3)

Maps - example of effective design (2/3)

Maps - example of effective design (3/3)

Graphs: Simplify!

• Franconeri, Steven L., et al. “The science of visual data communication: What works.” Psychological Science in the public interest 22.3 (2021): 110-161.

Graphs:focus on which message?

Graphs: Scale axis

• Message will be different depending on (a) how you present your data and (b) your audience

Graphs: simplify clutter

• many package in R allow you to ‘declutter’ your data

Graphs: Be effective

Graphs: Text is your friend

Graphs: very effective

Thoughts on Colors

• Use Sparingly – don’t lose preattentive attribute.
• Use Consistently – don’t change because you are bored.
• Design with colorblind in mind – 8% of men, 0.5 % women. (red/green)
  • (color brewer)
  • (tristen)
• Thoughtful of tone color conveys
  • (information is beautiful)

Thank you!

Eric Delmelle

Nick Bearman

Contact: We welcome any feedback via email. Thank you!