Aims and scope

Computational Humanities Research (CHR) is an open access journal in the computational humanities, publishing transdisciplinary papers that are grounded in humanities research questions and use computational, quantitative methodologies to analyse humanities data in its various forms. 

CHR publishes research that tackles big questions and solves problems pertaining to the humanities through advanced computational methods, contributing empirically to major theoretical, cultural, and historical inquiry. It seeks papers that spotlight quantitative and computational methods and applications, including the practical use and impact of computational techniques, in humanities research. 

CHR is the official journal of the CHR conference and network.

Areas of research and methods

CHR is particularly interested in research that uses such methods and applies them to (large or complex) data from a wide range of humanities research areas, including (but not limited to):

• Anthropology 
• Archaeology
• Art history and aesthetics 
• Classics
• Cultural analytics
• Cultural and heritage studies
• Film, theatre, and media studies
• Gender studies
• History
• Language studies and linguistics
• Literary studies 
• Musicology and sound studies
• Philosophy and ethics 
• Religious studies
• Sociology
• Methods and tools – i.e., papers focussing on the development of computational methods and tools for humanities research, and/or which explain how a specific method or tool can be used to advance the understanding of human culture, history, language, and social phenomena. Topics in this area include (but are not limited to) tool development, adaptation of existing tools and methods, evaluation of tools and methods, and methodological innovation.

A major goal of the journal is to think beyond disciplinary and department formations that can create walls and barriers to methodological shifts. As a result, CHR has decided to embed this paradigm shift in its peer review practices by organising its Associate Editors as well as broader Advisory Board around methods (rather than disciplinary expertise). These core methodological areas are:

• Text analysis – applications of algorithms and computational techniques to analyse and interpret textual data (e.g., NLP; text mining; information retrieval).
• Spatial analysis – applications of algorithms and computational techniques to spatial characteristics and patterns inherent in humanities data (e.g., GIS; spatial statistics and modelling; digital reconstructions; network analysis in spatial context).
• Audio and/or visual analysis – applications of algorithms and computational techniques to auditory and/or visual characteristics of humanities data (e.g., image processing; computer vision; audio processing; video analysis; multimodal analysis).
• Data/information visualisation – applications of algorithms and computational techniques to visualise humanities data (e.g., visualisation techniques for text, cartography, audio, and visual data; interactive visualisation; evaluation and critique of visualisation).
• Infrastructure and tools – foundational technological systems and software tools that support and enable research in computational humanities (e.g., software tutorials; frameworks/libraries; models; datasets; corpora and databases).
• Emerging approaches – latest and emerging innovative computational methods and interdisciplinary techniques being developed for and applied to humanities data, showcasing cutting-edge research that pushes the boundaries of computational methodologies (e.g., AI; AR/VR).
• Data ethics – applications of ethical principles and standards to the collection, analysis, and dissemination of humanities data, with a particular focus on issues such as consent, privacy, data security, bias, and the representation of individuals and cultures.
• Public humanities and Open Science – integration of humanities research with principles of openness and public engagement, aimed at making research outputs, methods and data freely accessible, promoting transparency, and involving the public in scholarly discourse.

Topics in the remit of the journal

CHR specifically seeks to publish high-quality, highly innovative research on the following topics:

• Applications of statistical methods and machine learning to process, enrich and analyse humanities data, including new media and cultural heritage data.
• Development of new quantitative and empirical methods for humanities research.
• Hypothesis-driven humanities research, simulations, and generative models.
• Modelling bias, uncertainty, and conflicting interpretation in the humanities; evaluation methods, evaluation datasets and development of standards; formal, statistical, or quantitative evaluation of categorisation/periodisation.
• Theoretical frameworks and epistemology for quantitative methods and computational humanities approaches.
• Transfer of methods from other disciplines; approaches to bridge humanistic and statistical interpretations.
• Potential challenges and intersections of AI applications to humanities research (including intersections of humanities and AI, and ‘eXplainable AI’).
• (Computational) interdisciplinary studies (e.g., cultural evolution).
• (Computational) embodied and performance studies.
• Advance visualisation studies (i.e., studies using advanced visualisation techniques to visualise large amounts of complex data).
• Translational and operational research related to computational humanities research (i.e., applications of computational humanities to practical, real-world problems and scenarios, aiming to translate findings into tangible, operational outcomes that benefit society).
• Replication studies within the computational humanities.

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Author instructions

More information about preparing your materials for submission, submitting your materials and the publication process itself can be found in the relevant tabs under 'Author Instructions' (in the navigation panel on the left-hand side of this page).

• See 'Fees and pricing'.
• See 'Preparing your materials'.
• See 'Research transparency' requirements.
• See 'Submitting your materials'.
• See 'Publication process after acceptance'.
• See 'Publishing agreement'.
• See 'Post publication impact'.

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Article types accepted

• Research Article*
• Replication Study*
• Registered Report Protocol*
• Registered Report*
• Rapid Communication*
• Short Article*
• Software Paper*
• Survey Paper* – by invitation/enquiry only
• Tutorial* – by invitation/enquiry only
• Editorial** – by invitation only