Journals for Remote Sensing, GIS and Geospatial Research: SCI, ESCI, Scopus and EI Compendex Options, With and Without Article Charges

Realistic timings in this science field: an IEEE letters-format paper can reach a first decision in six to ten weeks. A full SCIE journal article takes three to six months to a first decision, one to three more for revision, and one to two for production. The ISPRS and IEEE conference route delivers an indexed, citable record in three to five months.

So the sequence matters more here than the ranking. If your scenes are recent and the finding is time-sensitive, take the conference or the letters route now and build the full journal paper on a longer time series afterwards. If the work is methodological, the imagery date matters less and the slower journals are worth the wait. Everything below is grouped by what you pay, starting with the journals that charge nothing.

How to read a quartile before you read the list

Two quartiles exist and they measure different things. The Scopus quartile comes from Scimago, inside a Scopus subject category. The JCR quartile comes from Clarivate, inside a Web of Science category, using the impact factor. In this field they disagree sharply, and several titles below carry a Scopus Q2 alongside a Web of Science Q3.

The index tier matters more than either. An ESCI journal shows an impact factor and a quartile that look exactly like an SCIE one on screen, so an ESCI Q1 will not satisfy a rule asking for SCIE. Where the tier is not recorded, the tables say so rather than guess, and those titles need an ISSN check on the Master Journal List. Settling this before the cover letter is the first step in Journal Submission Preparation.

Diamond open access: geospatial journals that charge nothing

An unusually strong free tier, led by a Springer title at SCIE Q1 with an impact factor above 10 that charges the author nothing at all.

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

Web of Science options: SCIE, SSCI and ESCI

The senior journals of the field. Most are subscription titles, which means no APC and the longest queues. The AI Journal Finder matches an abstract against these in seconds.

Scopus-indexed options, Q1 and Q2

Several of these carry a Scopus Q2 with a Web of Science Q3, which is the mismatch described above. For a Scopus requirement they do the job and most cost nothing.

Scopus-indexed options, Q3 and Q4, where a first paper usually lands

Modest band, all free to publish. For a PhD scholar needing a dated indexed record, this and the Diamond table are the realistic routes, and planning a sequence is the Mentorship Program.

EI Compendex indexed journals

The engineering side, where sensor, signal and processing contributions belong. Two of these publish quickly enough to matter when imagery is fresh.

Gold open access journals for remote sensing and GIS

Published charges, and the widest range in this subject: from 20 US dollars to 3,950.

Indexed conference routes in remote sensing

The strongest conference circuit in this entire series. ISPRS Archives and IGARSS are genuinely indexed, genuinely reviewed, and fast enough to matter when imagery is current.

Designs that remote sensing editors reject on sight

In this field the manuscript is usually rejected on the method section, not the writing. Five designs come back again and again.

1. Accuracy reported without a proper validation design. An overall accuracy and a kappa value, computed on pixels drawn from the same polygons used for training. Reviewers want an independent sample, a stated sampling design, and a confusion matrix with per-class producer and user accuracy.
2. Kappa presented as the headline statistic. The remote sensing methods literature has moved against kappa for accuracy assessment. Report overall accuracy with confidence intervals and per-class measures instead, and if you include kappa, do not rest the argument on it.
3. No pre-processing chain. Sensor, product level, acquisition dates, cloud cover threshold, atmospheric correction method and version, resampling and projection. Missing any of these makes the work unrepeatable, and it is the commonest desk rejection we see here.
4. A classifier comparison with no tuning. Random forest beating support vector machines with default parameters proves nothing. State the hyperparameter search and the compute budget given to each method.
5. A single site with global claims. One watershed, one city, one season, generalised to a region. Either add sites or scale the claim to the study area, and say which.

Fixing this before submission is Manuscript Preparation Support, and the round that follows a hard review is Review & Response Support.

What gets accepted in this field, and what gets rejected

Manuscript Health CheckerFind the method and scope problems that cause desk rejections.

Is ABDC A the same as Scopus Q1 for remote sensing research?

The question does not apply here, and that matters. ABDC is a list of business and management journals maintained by the Australian Business Deans Council, so remote sensing, photogrammetry and GIScience titles are outside its scope entirely.

If a committee asks for an ABDC grade for a remote sensing paper, they are applying a business school rule to a science output. The relevant measures in this field are the Web of Science tier and impact factor, the Scopus quartile, and in China the CAS partition.

Which remote sensing journals are on the ABDC list?

Essentially none, because the list covers business disciplines such as accounting, finance, marketing, management and information systems. The spatial titles on this page, including the ISPRS Journal and the IEEE transactions, are not candidates for it.

The closest overlap is the information systems side, where a GIScience paper submitted to a management information systems journal could land on an ABDC-listed title. That is a venue change, not a reclassification of your field.

What counts as an A star journal in remote sensing research?

There is no A star in this field, because that grade belongs to the ABDC business list. The equivalent shorthand is the small group of SCIE Q1 titles at the top of the Web of Science table: the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Remote Sensing of Environment, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing and the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine.

In Chinese institutions the working equivalent is CAS Zone 1, which is stricter than a JCR quartile and is published separately each year. Check the current table through your library rather than assuming.

Which remote sensing journals were discontinued by Scopus recently?

Scopus publishes discontinued titles in a separate file from the active source list, and this page lists active titles only, so no delisted list is given here. Download the discontinued sources file from Elsevier and search your ISSN in it before you submit.

This field carries a specific risk worth naming: it has attracted a large number of new open access titles with geospatial-sounding names since 2020, and new titles are the ones most likely to be added and later removed.

How long is the gap between a Scopus delisting and a journal still claiming indexing?

Indefinitely, in practice, because nothing obliges a journal to remove the claim from its own website. We regularly see titles advertising Scopus coverage a year or more after the discontinuation date, sometimes with the old coverage years still displayed.

That is why the journal's own site is never evidence. The only current answer is the live Scopus source list and the discontinued file, checked on the day you submit.

Which remote sensing journals charge no article processing fee and are still indexed?

As on October 2026 the no-fee indexed options here include Satellite Navigation at SCIE Q1, the Journal of Remote Sensing published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Journal of Geodesy and Geoinformation Science, the Journal of Spatial Information Science, Spatial Economics, the ISPRS Annals and the Turkish Journal of Remote Sensing.

Beyond those, every subscription title in the tables above also charges no APC, including IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters at SCIE Q1, which makes this one of the cheapest fields in the series to publish in.

The UGC CARE list was discontinued, so how do I verify a remote sensing journal now?

The UGC discontinued the CARE list in a public notice dated 11 February 2025, following its decision of 3 October 2024, and published the final list only as a reference resource with no endorsement attached. Verification now runs through the live Scopus source list, the Web of Science Master Journal List and your own institution's parameters.

For Indian authors in this field the practical stack is Scopus or Web of Science for indexing, the impact factor and quartile for tier, and the institution's own recognised list where one exists. An archived CARE entry proves nothing today.

How do I check whether a remote sensing journal is still indexed today?

Take the ISSN from a published article and search it on the live Scopus source list and the Web of Science Master Journal List, then check the discontinued and on-hold files as well as the active ones. Do it on the day you submit, because a list from last quarter is not evidence about today.

Search by ISSN rather than by title. This field has an unusual number of near-identical names, with several journals differing only by a country word or the order of "remote sensing" and "geoinformation", and a wrong match is how authors end up on a cloned site.

What editors screen before a reviewer sees your paper

The editorial office checks whether the English is clear enough to review, whether the structure and reference style match the journal, and what the similarity report says. In this field there is a fourth check: figure quality. Maps and classification results are the evidence here, so low-resolution figures, missing scale bars, missing north arrows and unreadable legends get papers returned before review. Run your own overlap check first with the Plagiarism & AI Similarity Checker, and settle the language and figure formatting through Manuscript Editing.

Where Research Ramp comes in

We match a finished abstract against live indexing, tell you plainly when a design will not survive the first screen, and prepare the submission so the editorial office has no reason to bounce it on formatting. Subject-matched PhD editors, milestone payments, and the author stays the author throughout. Where a study needs a second site or a partner with field data, that is Collaboration Matching, and past work is on our Case Studies page.

Questions we are asked about timing and desk rejection

Disclaimer. Every table on this page is correct as on October 2026 and no later. Article charges shown in US dollars are approximate conversions at October 2026 rates, and journals bill in their own currency. Indexing, quartile, access model and charges change through the year, and journals can be added to or removed from Scopus and Web of Science at any time. This page is general information only. Research Ramp Private Limited accepts no responsibility or liability for any decision made on the basis of it, including the choice of journal, any charge paid, or the outcome of any submission. Every detail must be independently verified by the author with the journal's own website and the live Scopus source list and Web of Science Master Journal List before submitting. If you would like an informal second check, send us the title and we will look at it for you.

本页所有列表数据截至 2026 年 10 月，仅供一般参考。Research Ramp 不对任何依据本页作出的选刊、付费或投稿结果承担责任。投稿前请务必通过期刊官网及 Scopus、Web of Science 实时数据自行核实收录情况与费用。