ScienceOpen features humanities and social sciences research

Although our name may suggest a focus on the physical and natural sciences, ScienceOpen works with all types of scholarly publishers. Many of our partners are publishing in the fields of humanities and social sciences (HSS), and so ScienceOpen is a great resource for research in these areas in addition to STEM subjects. In this post, we are pleased to highlight some very interesting and recently added HSS content and Collections on the platform.

The humanities encompass such subjects as philosophy, history, literature, religion, music, and the human condition, whereas the social sciences include subjects like sociology, psychology, economics, and political science. We have focused on both humanities and social sciences content in this post. However, there are a lot more HSS Collections on the platform, particularly related to psychology research, that will be explored in another post—so stay tuned.

In this post, we start out by presenting six Collections of Books that fall into the HSS subjects. Next, we have listed many of the humanities journals that are featured on the platform. We then list Collections created with our partner, Emerald Publishing, that bring together research on the Sustainable Development Goals that include a lot of HSS research. Lastly, we have listed a couple new Social Sciences (SS) Journal Collections on ScienceOpen. We hope you’re able to find something that inspires you in this extensive list of HSS research on ScienceOpen.

Books

In the last year, ScienceOpen has made great strides in our capabilities surrounding books. To read about our infrastructure for books, check out the ScienceOpen blogpost, ScienceOpen’s infrastructure for 4.3 million academic book and chapter records on the platform. Below, we are pleased to present six Book Collections of humanities and social sciences research:

Amsterdam University Press Books

Amsterdam University Press is a leading scholarly publisher of the Humanities and Social Sciences. The key aim of AUP is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community. Explore Amsterdam University Press Books on ScienceOpen:

• Old English Ecotheology
• Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal
• Myth and History in Celtic and Scandinavian Traditions
• Rembrandt, Vermeer, and the Gift in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art

The Sustainable History Monograph Pilot

The Sustainable History Monograph Pilot is a Mellon Foundation–funded initiative by Longleaf Services Inc. to publish open access, digital editions of high-quality books from university presses in the field of history. Explore some of these freely available books below:

• Liberalism and Transformation: The Global Politics of Violence and Intervention
• The Search for the First Americans: Science, Power, Politics
• Improvising Reconciliation: Confession after the Truth Commission
• Augustus Hopkins Strong & Struggle to Reconcile Christian Theology with Modern Thought
• Police Matters: The Everyday State and Caste Politics in South India, 1900-1975

African Minds

African Minds is one of our book hosting customers. It is an open access, not-for-profit, publisher of scholarly books. African Minds publishes predominantly in the social sciences and its authors are typically African academics or those with a close affinity with the continent. At African Minds the emphasis is on fostering access and debate in the pursuit of growing and deepening the African knowledge base. See some books below:

• Refractions of the National, the Popular and the Global in African Cities
• Situating Open Data: Global Trends in Local Contexts

University of Maribor Press Books

The University of Maribor Press publishes scientific books, expert books, textbooks and other monographs in various fields of science, technology, art, humanities and social sciences. It is also an open access publisher and provides the academic community with an environment to pursue new avenues of scientific communication, that is, open access publishing. University of Maribor Press Books collection at ScienceOpen presents the production of scientific books and international conference proceedings of University of Maribor:

• Über Sprachen aus der Perspektive von Gymnasiast*innen aus Slowenien und aus der Slowakei Translated title: On Languages from the Perspective of Slovenian and Slovak Secondary School Students
• 2nd International Conference on Technologies & Business Models for Circular Economy

Trivent Medieval

Trivent Medieval is dedicated to studies pertaining to the history and culture of the Middle Ages. It includes book series covering the time span from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, while also going into the modern and post-modern periods through studies on medievalism. The collection is largely focusing on medieval and Byzantine art, Late Antique and Byzantine studies, Mediterranean history, equestrian history, witchcraft and religion, gender and women in the Middle Ages, as well as Carolingian studies. Recent titles include:

• The Materiality of the Horse
• MARY, THE APOSTLES, AND THE LAST JUDGMENT. APOCRYPHAL REPRESENTATIONS FROM LATE ANTIQUITY TO THE MIDDLE AGES

University of Westminster Press Books

University of Westminster Press is based in the heart of Central London and is a digital-first open access publisher of peer reviewed academic books, policy briefs and journals that was launched in 2015. It publishes widely in the social sciences, humanities and in environmental studies across its range of books and journals. Explore some of the University of Westminster Press Books here:

• Communication and Capitalism
• Touch
• Well-Being and Mental Health in the Gig Economy

Our Partners’ Journals covering Humanities Research

ScienceOpen has many partners publishing journals that include humanities research. We introduce several of these partners below alongside a selection of relevant journals for you to explore, plus specific papers we think are of general interest. Enjoy!

Academicus International Scientific Journal

We are pleased to start off with and give a warm welcome to the newest Journal Collection on ScienceOpen, Academicus International Scientific Journal. Academicus ISJ is a peer-reviewed, open access journal published in English, semi-annually in the social sciences and humanities fields, i.e. sociology, economy, politics, law and communication. Check out some recent articles just added to the platform:

• No Capitalism Without Nationalism
• Hopeful Provocations for a Dialogue with Critical Pedagogy
• From the concept of Environmental Reason to a Global Ethics project

UCL Press

The University College London (UCL) Press is a new university press, relaunched in 2015 as an Open Access press, and the first fully Open Access university press in the UK. UCL Press publishes a number of open access journals covering a diverse range of subjects across the humanities and social sciences. Explore a couple of its journals, hosted on ScienceOpen, that we’ve highlighted for you below!

Radical Americas is an open-access academic journal that explores the historical, political and social contexts that have underpinned radicalism in the Americas.

• Subject/ive bodies: the resistance poetics of Chrystos and Mahadai Das
• The politics of the street: Street art, public writing and the history of political contest in Chile
• Collective trauma, feminism and the threads of popular power: A personal and political account of Chile’s 2019 social awakening

The London Journal of Canadian Studies is an interdisciplinary open-access journal publishing high quality papers specialising in Canadian history, politics, culture and society.

• The Legacy of 1812: How a Little War Shaped the Transatlantic World
• Climate Observing During Canada’s Empires, 1742–1871: People, Places and Motivations
• Why Ross Survived When Franklin Died: Arctic Explorers and the Inuit, 1829–1848

Brepols

Brepols, founded in 1796, is an international academic publisher of works in the humanities. We have several Journals from Brepols on the platform. The Journal of Urban Archaeology is the first dedicated scholarly journal to recognise urban archaeology as a field within its own right and is the latest journal published by Brepols on ScienceOpen:

• Interfaces and Crossroads, Contexts and Communications: Early Medieval Towns in the Syr-Darya Delta (Kazakhstan)
• Srivijaya: Trade and Connectivity in the Pre-modern Malay World
• Shades of Urbanism(s) and Urbanity in Pre-Colonial Africa: Towards Afro-Centred Interventions

Additionally, the Journal for the History of Environment and Society is particularly relevant for humanities research. Explore some recent articles from the COVID-19 and Environmental History Issue:

• Viruses, Practices and Perception
• Cholera, Corona and Trust in Numbers
• Undoing the Discipline: History in the Time of Climate Crisis and COVID-19

To explore all of Brepols’ content on ScienceOpen, check out the Brepols Super Collection.

University of Westminster Press

As we mentioned the University of Westminster Press Books earlier, we now introduce you to a couple of UWP’s Journals in the humanities. Check them out!

Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman

• Landscapes of Heathrow: The Aircraft Landing Gear Compartment and the Politics of Global Transfer

Silk Road: A Journal of Eurasian Development

• Climate Change Effects on Agriculture and Food Security in Tajikistan

Liverpool University Press

Liverpool University Press is the UK’s third oldest university press and has several journals indexed on ScienceOpen. LUP has rapidly expanded in recent years to become an award-winning academic publisher that produces approximately 130 books a year, 39 journals and a number of digital resources, specialising in literature, modern languages, history and visual culture. Modern Languages Open is one of LUP’s humanities Journals which is a peer-reviewed platform for the open access publication of research from across the modern languages to a global audience. Check out some of its papers on the platform here:

• Conducting Interdisciplinary Research in Modern Languages: Towards ‘Common Ground’ and ‘Integration’
• The Mother of All Murder Mysteries: Los misterios de Laura

The Open Library of Humanities

The Open Library of Humanities (OLH) is a charitable organization dedicated to publishing open access scholarship with no author-facing article processing charges (APCs). They’re funded by an international consortium of libraries who have joined them in their mission to make scholarly publishing fairer, more accessible, and rigorously preserved for the digital future. There is a lot of content from OLH on ScienceOpen which can all be explored in the Open Library of Humanities Super Collection. Below are a couple recent publications:

• The semantics of prenominal possessives in Russian
• The Dance and Movement Work of Jennifer Pike Cobbing: Economies of Effort and Vitality Dynamics

Emerald HSS Research Supporting the Sustainable Development Goals

Emerald Publishing is part of the Emerald Group and has several Collections on ScienceOpen. Here, we want to highlight Emerald’s carefully curated themed collections of research, each aligned to a key mission supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are connected to the humanities and social sciences:

• Fairer Society – The work showcased here recognizes Emerald’s support for promoting a society that is just, inclusive and embracing of all without any barriers to participation based on sex, sexual orientation, religion or belief, ethnicity, age, class or ability, and where there is access to healthcare and education, technology, justice, strong institutions, peace and security, social protection, decent work and housing.
  • Vulnerability to domestic physical violence among married women in Indonesia

• Quality Education for All – Emerald believes in quality education for everyone, and this Collection contains research highlighting this topic. They have curated their best and most relevant research aligned to SDGs 4, 10 and 16 to support the goal of Quality Education for All.
  • The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on student learning performance from the perspectives of community of inquiry

• Responsible Management Emerald believes there has to be a commitment to ensuring sustainability itself is managed ethically and responsibly. They have curated their best research supporting this, linking into SDGs 8,9,10,11 and 12.
  • The effect of environmental concern on conscious green consumption of post-millennials: the moderating role of greenwashing perceptions

Recent Social Sciences Journal Collections

We would like to conclude this post with a teaser of some of the recent Social Sciences Journals on the platform. There is a lot more social sciences research to be found on ScienceOpen, especially in psychology, but that will be explored in a future blogpost. Below, we highlight two great social sciences journals from our partners, UUM Press and the Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal.

UUM Press

Jurnal Pembangunan Sosial by Universiti Utara Malaysia Press is a refereed journal published annually (July) by UUM Press for the School of Applied Psychology, Social Work and Policy, UUM College of Arts and Sciences

• Does Social Networking among Blood Donors’ Matter? The Role of Social Capital on the Motivation to Donate Blood (Adakah Jaringan Sosial dalam Kalangan Penderma Darah? Peranan Modal Sosial dalam Motivasi Menderma Darah)
• The Effect of Self-Leadership Strategies on Innovative Work Behaviors among School Teachers (Kesan Strategi Kepemimpinan Kendiri terhadap Tingkah Laku Kerja Inovatif dalam Kalangan Guru Sekolah)

Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal

Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal (SBP) publishes papers on all aspects of social, personality, and developmental psychology. Check out some carefully selected articles below:

• Editor’s Pick –  Moderating role of hope in the relationship between perceived discrimination and life satisfaction among left-behind children in China
• Public moral motivation during the COVID-19 pandemic: Analysis of posts on Chinese social media
• If you’re further interested, SBP has an open access COVID-19 research collection on their website: https://www.sbp-journal.com/index.php/sbp/pages/view/COVID-19_Research

University of Maribor Press

Lexonomica Journal of Law and Economics published by the University of Maribor Press, is focused on the critical analysis of developments in law and economics throughout the world. See some interesting papers here:

• Eroded Rule of Law, Endemic Violence and Social Injustice in Brazil
• The Effect of Enforceability

Follow Collections for real time updates

Leave us a comment if you liked this type of blogpost! We hope that something from this long list of research caught your eye. And if a Collection was of particular interest to you, the easiest way to stay up to date with new content is to follow it and subscribe to get email notifications when new content is added. For explicit instructions on following collections, go here.

Are you publishing research related to the humanities? If so and you would like to discuss how ScienceOpen can support your journal, books, or metadata, get in touch with someone from the team today!