Journal Information

Why publish in Humanities & Social Sciences Communications?

Humanities & Social Sciences Communications is a fully open access journal publishing scholarship from across all areas of the humanities, social and behavioural sciences. We encourage the submission of research outputs arising in specific disciplines, or from inter-disciplinary engagement.

We aspire to be the definitive peer-reviewed outlet for open access research in and between fields within our scope. The journal is published by Springer Nature. It began publication as Palgrave Communications (ISSN 2662-9992) and operated under that title until June 16th 2020.

  • Open access journal covering all of humanities and social sciences.
  • Publishes articles, reviews, and comments, as well as guest-edited thematic series.
  • High visibility for your work with open access.

For a more detailed aims and scope visit this page and to hear from past authors click here.

Journal Metrics

Article metrics such as number of downloads, citations and online attention are available from each article page, and provide an overview of the attention received by a paper.

2022 Citation Metrics

2-year Impact Factor*: 3.5
5-year Impact Factor*: 3.5
Immediacy index*: 0.9
Eigenfactor® score*: 0.00390
Article influence score*: 0.9
Journal Citation Indicator*: 4.83

SNIP**: 1.620
SJR***: 0.705

*2022 Journal Citation Reports® Science Edition (Clarivate Analytics, 2023)
**Source-normalized Impact per Paper (Scopus)
***SCImago Journal Rank (Scopus)

2023 Peer Review Metrics

Submission to first editorial decision: 27 days
Submission to Accept: 211 days

2023 Usage Metrics

Downloads: 4,862,226
Altmetric mentions: 12,092

Quality assurance

We offer our authors a highly respected home for their research. We strive to uphold the highest editorial and ethical standards – and to provide our authors and readers with a responsive and efficient service.

Expert peer review

Partnering with our extensive network of expert peer reviewers, our editorial team provides rigorous, objective and constructive peer review, and will support you throughout the publication process. The journal is led by the same ethical and editorial policy guidelines as other journals within the Springer Nature family to ensure that all the research we publish is academically robust.

Swiftly visible and highly discoverable for all

We help your research reach more people and maximise its impact. As an open access journal, we ensure that your work is immediately accessible and highly discoverable across a range of channels. The journal is also indexed in key services ensuring your work is seen by fellow academics.

Is your research relevant to our journal?

With our very broad scope, we welcome research from all areas and between the humanities and social sciences. We additionally welcome interdisciplinary scholarship, including that arising in, or informed by, the physical, life, clinical and environmental sciences, if it makes a contribution to the advancement of the humanities or social sciences. We also welcome research that seeks to inform policymaking of all types.

View our scope and browse our published articles.

Need to understand our editorial process and criteria?

Learn about our editorial process to find out more.

Do you understand our open access policies?

Learn more about open access publishing and why uptake among the humanities and social sciences disciplines is increasing. Click here to see how much it costs to publish in Humanities & Social Sciences Communications and learn about funding support or options for those lacking appropriate funding.

Do you want to submit a manuscript to our journal?

Follow the step-by-step process outlined in author instructions.