Ten years ago, we believed that the time was ripe for a broad-scope academic journal covering all areas of the humanities, social and behavioural sciences. Our guiding mission was clear—we wanted to provide a multi- and interdisciplinary forum for the publication of robustly peer-reviewed scholarship, and to champion the merits of the Open Access (OA) model for research sitting outside of STEM (Editorial, 2015a).

Thus, in January 2015 was born Palgrave Communications, a Palgrave Macmillan journal. Five years later, in June 2020, we renamed the journal to what it is known as today, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, to better and more clearly signal the breadth of its scope and to align it with the broader Springer Nature portfolio (Editorial, 2020a).

Over the past decade, this journal has seen considerable growth and diversification in its author base and readership. We are conscious that this success is the result of a combined effort—the product of the faith increasing numbers of researchers have placed in us to evaluate their work, as well as the expertise and dedication of our staff editors, board members and peer reviewers. We take this opportunity to thank all those who have contributed in some way to establishing the journal as a leading venue for the publication of humanities and social sciences (HSS) research.

Strength in breadth

A decade ago, it was already clear that traditional disciplinary boundaries were fast dissolving and that HSS scholars were increasingly collaborating closely with those from vastly different research and methodological traditions.

In launching this journal as a broad-scope publication, we wanted to respond to that emerging reality. Today, we believe that this positioning has stood us in good stead and that our breadth is one of the key factors behind this journal’s uniqueness and success.

We remain committed to publishing academic research of all types—whether niche in focus or of broader interest; theoretical; methodological; qualitative; quantitative; negative results; or replication studies—that engages with the study of society and the ways in which people behave, interact with and influence the world around them, as well as how they process, document and interpret their experiences. This extends to inter- or transdisciplinary perspectives that inform policymaking, especially related to the priorities set out in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (Editorial, 2020b).

Readers who explore our archive of publications will see the depth, richness and variety in the research published to date. This is also evident in topics covered in our regular thematic Collections, which span a vast range of areas—from Gothic and Horror Studies, and Scientific Advice to Governments, to the Future of Research Assessment, and Cultural Evolution.

Inclusivity and editorial rigor

We have long prioritised the importance of clarity and transparency around editorial decision making for the benefit of our authors. For this reason, all our manuscript handling editors—the subject experts who form our international editorial board—evaluate research according to a universal set of six criteria for publication (Editorial, 2020b); research that fails to meet these criteria is not considered.

Taken together, these six criteria reflect our commitment to publishing scholarship that is methodologically and conceptually robust and which makes a contribution to the literature, however incremental or impactful. We do not accept papers for publication based on perceived degree of significance or impact—rather, we believe that that such judgements are frequently open to subjective interpretation or in any case can vary from field to field. Instead, our inclusive philosophy is that the wider research community should and will ultimately form such judgements post-publication.

Our staff editors work proactively with handling editors and referees to ensure that final editorial judgements are made consistently and fairly, and that best practice is upheld in line with our publishing policies.

The world a decade on

This journal’s first decade has spanned a period in which there has been considerable change in academia and scholarly publishing more broadly. We are acutely conscious of our responsibility to authors and readers to respond to such developments through our policies and editorial processes.

In this spirit, four key areas of rapid change are worth highlighting: the advent of AI and related technologies; the proliferation and diversification of scholarly malpractice; the increase in OA uptake in HSS; and growth in the adoption of open data practices in HSS. Each one of these presents challenges and opportunities for HSS academics and editors.

AI will radically reshape research and publishing

Since the early 2020s much ink has been spilled over the potential repercussions—positive and negative; known and unknown—of the adoption of AI technologies across all sectors. Such technologies offer enormous potential, when managed carefully with human oversight, to advance the way in which publishers and researchers work.

Today, more and more academics in HSS are experimenting with the use of AI tools as part of their research—whether for data gathering, methodology design, or manuscript writing. And in scholarly publishing, all major publishers are investing in AI-led tools. This journal, for instance, utilises AI technology via its peer review management system, Snapp, which it adopted in late 2024. This state-of-the-art platform, developed by Springer Nature, uses AI to run integrated research integrity checks on manuscript files.

Looking ahead, it is conceivable that language learning models or other tools may eventually be able to replicate and even replace elements of the traditional manuscript evaluation process. Such developments will pose complex questions for publishers and scholars, while also opening up opportunities.

Suffice it to say that HSS researchers will have a particularly important and unique role to play in analysing and debating the risks and benefits—not to mention ethical and cultural implications—of future technological change. We hope that this journal will also become a key outlet for the publication of some of that enquiry and discussion.

Scholarly malpractice is increasing

Plagiarism, collusion, fabrication and falsification are not new phenomena in academia. However, recent years have witnessed a proliferation and diversification in the types and variety of academic malpractice engaged in by bad faith actors across all disciplines and not solely in the quantitative sciences. The incentives and causes behind this proliferation are numerous and complex, and we can expect this trend to continue, if not intensify, aided by new technologies, including AI. This new reality presents major challenges not solely for editors and publishers, but all those who have a stake in safeguarding the scholarly record. Tackling malpractice in academia needs to be a multi-stakeholder effort; editors and publishers have a unique and increasingly demanding role to play in this regard.

As a journal, before we disseminate work for wider consumption, our responsibility is to evaluate research to determine whether it is valid and sound, and complies with the basic rules of publishing ethics. Beyond that, we must also certify meta-data—namely the authorship, the funding, the conflicts of interest, and other associated research materials such as code or data. This is a nontrivial process that we take very seriously—not solely for the sake of the majority of authors who conduct reputable research, but also for the sake of wider faith in academic research.

Looking ahead, we will continue to review how best we can equip this journal’s handling editors with the training and resources they need to be able to identify evidence of malpractice.

OA is gaining ground in HSS

This journal was born Open Access. As such, from day one, we have championed OA as a model that brings numerous benefits to all those who rely on the outputs of HSS research.

A decade ago, awareness of OA in many HSS communities was patchy; concerns about what OA meant for editorial quality and rigor were also commonplace. However, in the intervening period the landscape of OA in the HSS has developed significantly. Although accessing funds to publish OA has historically been more challenging for many HSS researchers, studies indicate that the lifetime prevalence of open science practices among HSS researchers has been increasing over the last 15 years, rising from 49% in 2010 to 87% a decade later (Ferguson et al., 2023).

Recent changes in the OA policy landscape have required more research, including HSS scholarship, to be published in OA formats, through funder and institutional OA policy mandates—for instance, Plan S funder requirementsFootnote 1, which include member organisations such as The European Commission and Wellcome. Consequently, there has been growth in funding opportunities and pathways to facilitate OA publication, and this has helped stimulate institutions and funders to work with publishers to support OA models that enable HSS authors to publish via the gold route, including individual article funding and agreements between institutions and publishers. Springer Nature has longstanding fully OA agreements with DEAL, Sweden and Hungary, for instance, and we know from our recent reportsFootnote 2 that agreements positively influence the overall OA uptake in the HSS disciplines.

Facilitating greater FAIR-ness

OA publishing, of course, should be seen in the wider context of the ‘open research’ movement, which additionally champions the value of removing access barriers to primary and meta data, source texts and digital reproductions. Underpinning this ‘open data’ philosophy is the conviction that research data should be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (or, FAIR) (Wilkinson et al., 2016).

While there has been progress, the practice of open data in HSS remains less established than in the life sciences. In STEM disciplines, data is bedrock of research and discovery. However, in the humanities, many researchers have different interpretations of what constitutes ‘data’ and often rely heavily on third-party sources that include data generated by others, which may raise questions about copyright and ownership. In the social sciences, the primary challenge for many scholars is understanding how and if their data can be shared, whether for reasons of consent, privacy or sensitivity.

At this journal, we have long recognised that there is ground to be made up in the level of awareness of open data practices across HSS communities. For this reason, in volume 1 we took a lead by introducing mandatory data availability statements on all published papers (Editorial, 2015b). In parallel, we proactively began encouraging and supporting authors to share their research ‘data’ (which we define broadly to mean any materials underpinning a body of research, whether qualitative or quantitative in nature) in either a recognised repository or the journal’s own, hosted by Dataverse. This approach has led to an increase in our authors taking up the opportunity to make their data or supporting materials discoverable and transparent on publication.

We will continue to be a vocal champion of open research in general and the advantages it brings for HSS. As a journal, we know that the single best contribution we can make to this wider effort is by facilitating the publication of quality OA research and supporting the dissemination of rigorous and reproducible scholarship.

Looking to the future

We live in a time of fast change and increasing complexity. Grand societal challenges present multi‐level, multi‐dimensional problems that demand joined-up solutions from a range of stakeholders. Whether it be mass migration, climate change, aging populations, political extremism, or regional instability, HSS scholars will play an ever more important role in the process of interpreting the new world unfolding before us and contributing to policy responses. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications will continue its mission to provide an inclusive, robust and editorially rigorous venue for the outputs of this endeavour.

We are proud of the vibrant and expanding community that we have established around this journal over the past decade. And we look forward to collaborating further for the good of the research communities we serve and the dissemination of analysis and discussion that advance our collective understanding of people, society and ideas.