The Global Reach of a Regional Journal: A Look at Who is Reading the Southeastern Geographer

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

highlights: • The Southeastern Geographer has long been marginalized as merely regional, but recent data shows it is a truly international journal. • SEG readership is split 57% within region and 43% outside region. A quarter of SEG readership is in universities that lack a geography (or geography adjacent) program. • The experience of authors suggests that papers in the SEG generate more engagement with people outside our discipline than papers in more specialized journals. • We speculate that the regional nature of the SEG makes it well suited for public engagement. abstract: The Southeastern Geographer has long been recognized within geography as one of the most respected regional journals. Unfortunately, those outside our discipline tended to view the journal as parochial due to its regional focus. This work presents recent digital readership data for the Southeastern Geographer which shows that 43% of readership is outside our region, and more than 13% of readership is international. The data also indicate that the Southeastern Geographer is widely read outside our discipline as well. Author experience is shared which suggests that the regional nature of the Southeastern Geographer increases reader engagement and papers appearing in the journal are more widely read than more specialized publications. We conclude that the Southeastern Geographer should be considered a model for modern scientific communication and make a case that efforts to marginalize the journal as regional are misplaced.