Ron Johnston is a world-renowned human geographer and historian of geographic thought. In his fruitful life, he made unparalleled contribution to the discipline of human geography. His contribution is not only reflected in his empirical research in urban geography, political geography, and political science with many academic journal papers, but also in his pioneering research on the history of geographical thought and quantitative research methods, and classic works such as Geography and Geographers. He published more than 40 academic monographs, including Philosophy and Human Geography, On Human Geography, and Putting Votes into Their Place: Geography and Elections in Great Britain, edited or coedited more than 40 academic monographs, including A Dictionary of Human Geography, The Future of Geography, and A Century of British Geography. As a university faculty, teaching is one of the three academic works. Johnston acted as course instructor for undergraduate courses such as Urban Geography, Urbanization, Internal Structure of the City, Philosophy and Methodology of Human Geography, Political Geography, State and Economic Restructuring, Contemporary Economic and Political Issues, Geography of Election, Research Methods, Multivariate Statistical Analysis, The State and the Environment, An Introduction to Geography, and for graduate courses, including Urban Geography, Urban Internal Structure, and Multivariate Statistics/Computing. As an advisor, Johnston supervised 47 graduate students. He wrote several important textbooks, including Multivariate Statistical Analysis in Geography: A Primer on the General Linear Model and Geography of Elections. He also set us a good example in terms of academic service. He coedited both Progress in Human Geography and Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space for 25 years (1979-2004), and served on countless editorial boards. He also often served as an external reviewer, participating in the evaluation of dissertations, research fund proposals, professional training programs, book manuscripts, RAE (research assessment exercise), REF (research excellence framework), professional title promotion, and so on. He published many book reviews to build healthy academic community culture. Ron Johnston's diligence, persistence, kindness, and warm and academic service spirit will always inspire us to move forward. We, as Chinese counterparts, can learn a lot from Ron Johnston as a professor and a member of the academic community.

The current Geographical Society of China (GSC) is the product of a merger of the Chinese Geographical Society established in 1909 and the former Geographical Society of China established in 1934. The establishment of the GSC and the launch of the journal Acta Geographica Sinica in 1934 are not only two major events in the history of Chinese geography, but also two spotlights in the history of Chinese education and science. This is the key point of the concept of science advocated by the New Culture Movement. The establishment of GSC clearly separated modern geography from traditional geoscientology and entered on the historical stage in the name of science. What's more, the publication of Acta Geographica Sinica enabled Chinese and foreign geographers to enjoy a high-end professional academic source in China. The emergence of the society and its journal was also a direct manifestation of wartime concepts such as "science saves the country" and "invigorating China through science."Under the organization and promotion of the GSC, the older generation of geographers worked hard and published a series of important articles in the Acta Geographica Sinica. The modern geographers who worked tirelessly finally drew the attention of the ruling class and occupied a place in the top-down design of the country. Although their understanding of the importance was mainly in the high-level and professional academic circles, it planted the seed for the later vigorous development of Chinese geographic science and laid a solid scientific foundation for awakening the ordinary people. In retrospect, the establishment of GSC and Acta Geographica Sinica was the beginning of Chinese geographic science and has become the promoter and witness of the development of Chinese geographic science. On the 110th anniversary of the founding of the GSC, we should inherit the spirit of the older generation of scientists, enrich the geographic science, provide better service for the construction of the country, and improve the scientific literacy of ordinary people.

Based on data on the establishment, change, and closure of undergraduate and graduate programs in higher education institutions of geography in China from 1980 to 2021 extracted from a variety of sources, this article discussed the development process of these institutions from three perspectives—types, growth, and distribution—and the current main issues they are facing. The following results were obtained. First, higher education institutions of geography include research institutions and departments at universities/colleges. Universities/colleges running geography departments could be divided into 11 categories: comprehensive, normal, engineering and mining, agriculture and forestry, technology and information, city and architecture, finance and economics, tourism, ethnic, language, and military universities/colleges. Second, it is necessary to divide geography institutions into "discipline" and "major," considering the difference in the number of geography majors in different institutions. Third, the development of higher education geography institutions can be divided into three stages: 1980-1998, stable growth period; 1999-2009, rapid growth period; and 2010-2021, fluctuating growth period. The various types of universities/colleges that run geography departments affect the growth of geography institutions in different stages. Fourth, the distribution of geography institutions can be divided into three stages: provincial stable expansion (1980-1998), provincial-prefecture level fast expansion (1999-2009), and provincial-prefecture level continuous expansion (2010-2021). Furthermore, there are differences in the spatial distribution and expansion trend of various types of universities/colleges that run geography departments. In the past 40 years, the types, growth, and distribution of higher education institutions of geography in China have been continuously optimized. Recently, there has been a development momentum of forming institutions with geography as a discipline as the core body and institutions with geography as a major as extended space. While this is a healthy development, it is also necessary to strengthen the disciplinary identity and communities in order to avoid the misunderstanding that geography is not a unified discipline for its diversified development, to alter the common phenomenon that "geography" or "geographic sciences" is disappearing from department names, and to reduce the risk of major institutions being closed.

Based on the literature of editing and publishing research of geography journals, this article firstly presents the characteristics of China’s journal development, including development of geography journal groups, core journals and English journals, as well as comparisons of geography journals at home and abroad. Then we make a statistical analysis of the papers published in major geography journals, papers related to human geography, and papers cited in core journals. Finally, we summarize what the Chinese geography editors have done in some aspects such as journal and geographical development, manuscript topic and idea creation, editing quality enhancement, plagiarism and duplication prevention, and computer and network application to editing and publishing. Some conclusions can be drawn in this study: Chinese geographers, especially editors, have done much research on the development and comparison of geography journals of China and other countries. In recent years, the number of papers focusing on the development of geography journals has been increasing. The geography journal editors not only are engaged in word editing, but also record the achievements obtained in Chinese geographical research. Meanwhile, they have been tracking the international trend of disciplinary development. Hence, in the past decades, the Chinese geography editors have made their due contributions to improving academic quality, leading the disciplinary orientation, promoting academic exchange, and perfecting the evaluation system of science periodicals.