From virtual special issues to virtual collections

Urban Geography has “published” virtual issues since I took over as editor in chief, just over five years ago. It is not alone. While they go by a range of names at journals, a mechanism for short editorial introductions to a thematically curated, already published set of papers is relatively common. For example, at the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR) they are “virtual issues”, while Urban Studies labels them “virtual collections”. The lengths of these editorials also varies, from around 1,000 to over 5,000 words. Some are almost programmatic, using the already published papers to set an agenda or make a statement. Other editorials tend towards highlighting matters that appear in and across individual papers. Who is able to write these editorials also differs from journal to journal. For example, at IJURR it is the journal’s “editorial team”. Finally, in terms of differences, there is variation in what “publishing” means. Some editorials appear in the pages of the journal, and thus receive a DOI. Others do not, appearing only on journal web pages.

Turning to Urban Geography, to date there have been six virtual special issues. These have been on “Housing, eh” (Markus Moos, University of Waterloo), “Gentrification” (Mark Davidson, Clark University), “Law and the city”, (Phil Hubbard, Kings College), “The urban landscape” (Philip Lawton, Trinity College Dublin), “Urban policy mobilities”, (Kevin Ward, University of Manchester) and “African cities in conversation”, (Mary Lawhon, Edinburgh University and Mwangi Mwaura, University of Oxford). Each of these virtual issues has done a wonderful job at drawing together and building upon a significant body of work within the journal, the introductions setting out potential future research agendas. However, of course, they really have only scratched the surface of the concepts, issues and themes that have appeared (and reappeared) over four decades in the pages of Urban Geography (Ward et al., 2020).

Housed not on the publisher’s website¹, but rather on a second journal site², the generation of these virtual special issues reflects who amongst the Urban Geography editors and editorial board has had the inclination and time to pull together already published papers and generate 750 to 1,500 words editorials. These do not appear within the pages of the journal, however. This means no DOI. Refereed they are also not. In turn, this means some confusion. How to list them on an academic CV? How to describe their contribution to a colleague or search committee? Do they “count” as an academic publication? Perhaps most importantly, given all of this, why would anyone undertake this work? Asked of me have been these and other related questions since I introduced the notion of virtual issues at Urban Geography. In response, the intellectual sell has been relatively easy. It is a chance to use over forty years of publications to make a wider point, one in which the curator has themselves made a contribution or has a stake. In some cases, the distribution of published papers over issues and volumes masks a significant, cumulative presence of Urban Geography in debates in the field with which it shares it name. Since its 1980 establishment, the journal has published hundreds of academic papers, of different lengths and across a range of sections. That is a significant back catalogue! Despite the ahem, “opportunities”, that curating a virtual special issue would appear to offer, readers might not be surprised to hear that their commissioning has been at times arduous and time-consuming. For every virtual special issue published by Urban Geography numerous have been promised but have not materialized. This is understandable. The workloads most of us labor under continue to increase. Good intentions sometimes lead to over-promising. That more use has not been made of past papers in Urban Geography is a frustration for me as editor in chief.

However, I hope this is about to change. Going forward, virtual special issues will be renamed virtual collections. This signals a more significant change in the status of the curated editorial introductions than perhaps this name change might imply! They will no longer appear on our second website. Rather, Urban Geography will publish them in the journal. They will get a DOI, meaning, in academic currency, they will “count”! The virtual collections will also appear on the publisher’s website, with permanent links to the curated, already published papers. These will be free to access for an initial period but the collections will continue to exist afterwards. Moreover, editors and editorial board members will no longer be the only ones able to delve into, and curate, the journal’s back catalogue. We invite others to get involved, to draw together and use any of the different types of Urban Geography papers in a virtual collection. If this appeals to you then please email me [[email protected]] with a short proposal of 500 words, including a list of the Urban Geography papers you would curate and include.

To mark the launch of this new initiative, we are excited to announce three virtual collections. The first is the “urban geographies of waste” by Nathan McClintock and Georgina Morris (2024). Its focus is waste, broadly defined – garbage/rubbish, toxic waste, e-waste, sewerage, recycling, compost, and so forth. Pulling together twenty-five past papers in the journal, the authors demonstrate how the evolution of scholarship on waste geographies mirrors wider trends in the field, from the rise of environmental justice framings to more-than-human geographies and the latest “infrastructural turn”. They make the point that more than just a material object requiring management, rather waste is a socio-technical assemblage that is vital space of urban politics. What constitutes “waste”, both discursively and materially, is contested and always evolving. As such, waste serves as an important window into the production of urban space. The second and third virtual collections are past virtual issues, reworked. Mary Lawhon and Mwangi Mwaura (2024) curate the contribution of eight papers in their “African cities in conversation: who are we listening and talking to?” They argue for a future in which those working on other cities outside of Africa are encouraged to engage more deeply with scholarship about Africa. Finally, Kevin Ward (2024) (yes, that is me! Do not ask!), draws together twenty-five papers around the theme of “Urban policy mobilities”. In his editorial introduction, he details the relatively recent growth in work in this field, making the case that in the lifecycle of academic concepts we still seem some way off “peak” policy mobilities.

To conclude, we hope we see more use made of past Urban Geography papers. While some are probably best left where they are – in the past – bringing together others might be productive, as a means to advancing an agenda going forward. That is my hope. Now, it is over to you!

Notes

1 Urban Geography on Taylor & Francis Online: https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/rurb20

2 Urban Geography’s independent website: https://www.urbangeographyjournal.org/journal/virtual-special-issues