Journal of Parks: An International Journal Synthesizing Multi-Disciplinary Knowledge About Parks

Journal of Parks (JOP, ISSN: 3042-5689) is an international journal developed to enhance our knowledge of how people use and perceive parks. The journal provides a format to publish multi-disciplinary studies that synthesize science and technology through various dimensions. From the perspective of natural resources, JOP aims to establish a theoretical base for promoting natural reserves in preserves, national parks, gardens, urban parks, industrial parks, greened communities, pocket parks, playgrounds, and frankly any park-like places. In terms of theory, JOP aims to be an assimilation of novel thoughts, innovative methodologies, and cutting-edge techniques that can together contribute to a nature-based solution (NBS) using parks. As an academic publication platform, it aspires to be an outlet of studies that brings together disciplines in forestry, horticulture, ecology, environmental economics, tourism and hospitality, management science, social science, landscape architecture, urban and rural planning, environmental design, public health, preventive medicine, environmental psychology, and other allied disciplines. It thus encourages theories, findings, modelling, practices, design, or planning in a cross-disciplinary nexus, with a view to contributing to the development of NBS and services for the anthroposphere.

Parks are termed as a type of ecological infrastructure with a high dose of nature that can provide ecosystem services for humans [1,2]. On a general view, parks could mean a playground for toddlers or a garden with high levels of biodiversity which stimulate human life for many. For families with strong desires to hike and camp, parks are always the places that harbor varied and charming challenges, promoting lasting experiences that shape who we are. In highly built-up regions and the blocks of a city, parks are usually the first place that a resident is keen to visit to connect with nature. Parks are planned in nearly all urbanization development projects globally as essential municipal facilities, serving as an inherent means of coping with thermal threats and creating important neighborhood space for leisure activities. Parks promote human health and well-being through taking our attention away from stress, providing evidence-based medical support through experiences with nature that may prevent or reduce decline in health and well-being in modern lives [3,4]. Therefore, parks are both important and necessary in urban societies to achieve several sustainable goals [5].

Before the commencement of JOP, parks research appears to be ‘homeless’ and scattered throughout other academic journals and fields. Current science and technology studies on parks are mainly derived from publications in a group of platforms in a broader range of disciplines than it should be. For example, vegetative investigation and botanical studies in parks are mainly published by journals in the domains of botany and ecology; verifications of theories of health promotion in parks are mostly published in journals dominated by forestry science; regional economics as it relates to parks tends to be documented by journals through regional studies and micro-economics; studies on park management tend to publish in journals on labor management, business, retail and services, or tourism management. On account of this, JOP is a new journal for studies in relevant disciplines on the topic of parks.

The journal is an open access publication platform that welcomes submissions as research papers, short communications, and review papers. There is no restriction on the maximum length of the papers; however, brevity and conveying research in a readable way is important. We are committed to ensuring JOP is an academic periodical of high impact and remarkable international reputation. To this end, we have recruited a group of scholars dedicated to park studies and all of us are ambitious to promote high-quality academic outcomes. That is, new submissions about parks will be highly welcomed in the future but anyone of them will be screened through processes in rigorous peer review and deep evaluating until being promoted with improvements where needed. Again, we encourage multi-discipline and novel submissions of academic work in line with those listed in this Editorial. Let’s do something together to move forward to publish applicable studies in JOP.