Aims & Scope

The Journal of Geospatial Science and Technology (JGST, print ISSN 2408-6517, online ISSN 2756-4088) is a double-blind peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by the African Regional Institute for Geospatial Information Science and Technology (AFRIGIST), Obafemi Awolowo University Campus, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. It publishes research on the science, methods and application of geospatial information, with particular emphasis on the use of remote sensing and GIS to address the social, economic and environmental challenges confronting African countries. Articles are published in English or French, with abstracts in both.

SUBJECT AREAS

• Geographic information systems and spatial analysis — spatial statistics and point-pattern analysis such as nearest-neighbour and Moran's I, network analysis and service-area accessibility, overlay and interpolation including kriging, and the spatial distribution of public facilities, crime locations and urban services.
• Remote sensing and Earth observation — processing and supervised classification of optical satellite imagery (Landsat, Sentinel-2, NigeriaSat-X and high-resolution sensors), accuracy assessment, vegetation indices such as NDVI, comparative evaluation of sensors, and biomass and carbon-stock estimation.
• Land use and land cover change — multi-temporal change detection, intensity analysis, landscape fragmentation metrics, and projection of future land cover with CA-Markov and related models.
• Multi-criteria spatial decision support — GIS-based multi-criteria decision analysis and the analytic hierarchy process for site suitability (landfills, care and health facilities, infrastructure) and for vulnerability and risk mapping.
• Environmental hazards and natural resources — soil and gully erosion modelling with USLE and criteria-based methods, groundwater potential mapping, water resources and water use, and the spatial assessment of environmental and social impacts of quarries and other sites.
• Forests, vegetation and protected areas — geomatics for forest management and development plans, forest inventory and woody-vegetation structure mapped or spatialised across a study area, and the monitoring of classified forests, biosphere reserves and sacred groves.
• Urban and regional planning applications — development control and setback compliance measured from remotely sensed data, urban expansion, and the siting and accessibility of social services.
• Surveying, geodesy, photogrammetry and cartography — GNSS positioning and field data capture, geodetic control, photogrammetric and UAV mapping, cartographic design and geovisualisation.
• Geospatial data science and emerging technologies — spatial databases and web GIS, GeoAI and machine learning applied to spatial data, and open-source geospatial software.

METHODS: remote-sensing studies that state the sensor, acquisition dates, preprocessing, classification method and accuracy assessment; GIS analyses that state data sources, scale or resolution, criteria and weighting; field surveys, forest inventories and GNSS campaigns with a described sampling design; questionnaire and interview data integrated with spatial analysis; spatial modelling and simulation with validation; methodological papers that compare techniques, models or sensors; and systematic reviews reported with a PRISMA flow.

MANUSCRIPT TYPES: original research articles, review articles, technical papers, case studies, research notes and short communications, and methodological papers. Research and review articles run to 4,000–6,000 words of main text, excluding the abstract, references, figure captions, tables and appendices. Each manuscript carries a single unstructured abstract of not more than 300 words, supplied in English and French, and at least four keywords. Text is in UK or US English used consistently, or in French; SI units are used throughout; figures are at least 600 dpi; and references follow the Harvard name–date system. Manuscripts are submitted through the journal website as a Microsoft Word .docx file of not more than 10 MB, anonymised for double-blind review: author names and affiliations are entered on the submission form and must not appear in the manuscript file.

READERSHIP: geospatial scientists, surveyors, cartographers and remote-sensing specialists; researchers and postgraduate students in geography, environmental science, urban and regional planning and natural resource management; national mapping, space and environmental agencies; and planners and policy makers in English- and French-speaking Africa.

OUT OF SCOPE: studies in which GIS or remote sensing plays no real part in the analysis — a location map alone does not make a paper geospatial; papers whose main contribution is to land tenure, land law, land administration or environmental governance rather than to geospatial science, which belong in the sister journal AJLAEM; image classifications with no accuracy assessment and no research question; software tutorials and product descriptions without evaluation; unrevised student project reports; ecology, hydrology, geology or public-health studies with no spatial method; and manuscripts already published elsewhere or under consideration by another journal.