Forty years ofLandscape Research

Abstract

Landscape Research is the journal of the Landscape Research Group (LRG). The first issue published under its current name in Winter 1976 contains a modest but illuminating editorial by the then editor, Ian C. Laurie. Referring to the change of name from Landscape Research News to Landscape Research, he notes:[…] the change reflects more clearly the main aim of the publication: to print short papers which can draw the reader's attention to research studies in a number of different subject areas, but which all have a common interest in the changing processes and activities which control the landscape. It is our intention to give equal attention to studies concerned with design and management, and to landscape planning and landscape science. This is based on the recognition that the study of the landscape is not contained within any one discipline or profession or even within any two or three of them. Thus, 'landscape' was understood as an integrative concept from the very beginning of the journal, and recognised as the subject matter of many disciplines and professions. The journal is conceived as multidisciplinary in that a common topic is addressed drawing on knowledge from disciplinary-specific bases (Choi & Pak, 2006, p. 359). This integrative mission remains applicable to Landscape Research today. However, emphasis has shifted from multi-to interdisciplinarity, understood in this context as an approach that 'analyzes, synthesises and harmonises links between disciplines in a coordinated ABSTRACT Papers of four decades published in Landscape Research are reviewed in order to chronicle the journal's development and to assess the academic performance of the journal relative to its own aims. Landscape Research intends to reach a wide audience, to have a broad thematic coverage and to publish different types of papers with various methodological orientations. Cutting across these first aims are the interdisciplinary ambition of the journal, and its overall focus on landscape. These aims are evaluated based upon categorisation of article content, authorship and methodology, using data derived through interpretative inquiry and quantitative analyses. The results tell the story of how Landscape Research has developed from a newsletter of the Landscape Research Group, mainly aimed at practitioners, into an interdisciplinary, international journal with academic researchers as its primary community of interest. The final section discusses the current profile of the journal and identifies issues for its future direction and development.

Fifty years of Landscape Research Group

“…Figure 5 shows the key disciplines grouped in a similar manner to the analysis of Landscape Research authors' disciplines (Vicenzotti et al, 2016; Figure 5) over a fifty-year period. Figure 6 presents the data in five-year bandings (counted as 'person-years' of service, and double-counting those cases where a member had multiple background disciplines).…”

“…Furthermore, new and different disciplines, such as arts/literature and archaeology/heritage, have become represented at various points in time, reflecting modern wider understandings of landscape-such as the cultural and historic landscape-that would not have featured (or at least, not greatly featured) in the thinking of the founders. The two analyses in many respects parallel the variety of disciplines of Landscape Research authors and range of their papers' subject themes and research strategies (Vicenzotti et al, 2016;Figures 5-7, and Tables 4 and 6). An overview of both sets of findings gives clear, if indirect, evidence that the Group's original ambition to represent, adopt and promote a multi-and inter-disciplinary approach to landscape research-and as a result to understand landscape as a complex multi-dimensional phenomenon with both material and meaningful dimensions-has been achieved.…”

“…Figure 10 shows the location of the subscribing institutions, using data for 1980, 1989 and 1990, and 2005-2016 in bands over that period, while Figure 11 shows subscribers' geographical distribution in the period 2005 to 2015 (based on average number over that period). The location of journal authors is shown in Vicenzotti et al (2016, Figure 3). Taken together, the three figures show that the UK-based proportion has steadily decreased, particularly since 2000, with increasingly worldwide coverage over time.…”

Landscape research inLandscape Research: reflections on a changing field

“…Herrington's account of the past and future of beauty reminds us emphatically of the importance of not neglecting the aesthetic dimension of landscape (Herrington, 2016). Vicenzotti et al (2016) discuss the journal's openness to grappling with definitions of landscape. This special issue illustrates how such an approach becomes a strength when the multiple understandings of landscape are actually addressed.…”

“…The initial paper by Vicenzotti, Jorgensen, Qviström, and Swaffield (2016) chronicles the development of the journal by reviewing articles from four decades. The other papers, based on historical reflections, provide insights into the future of the field of landscape research.…”