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About the Journal

Focus and Scope
The Journal of Human-Technology Relations (JHTR) is a peer-reviewed diamond open access journal with no article processing charges and no publishing fees. All research papers are double-blind peer-reviewed. We welcome high-quality submissions from all disciplines relevant to the study of human-technology relations, regardless of the approach or school of thought from which they originate. JHTR welcomes both theoretical and empirical analyses of human-technology relations, as long as they contribute to a better understanding of the character, structure, and implications of the relations between humans, technologies, and societies.

Technologies have come to play a central role in human lives and societies. They help to shape how humans are born and die, learn and live, behave and are being treated, work and relax, have families and friendships, have power and are overpowered, build societies and engage in politics. Studying human-technology relations, therefore, requires a wide range of academic disciplines and subdisciplines in the humanities and the social sciences. To this end, with a basis in Philosophy of Technology and in Science and Technology Studies, JHTR welcomes contributions on human-technology relations from a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from Design Research to Human-Computer Interaction, from Ethics to Metaphysics, and from Political Theory to Responsible Research and Innovation, and Artistic Research. The composition of the board of associate editors and the editorial advisory board reflects the variety of approaches from which human-technology relations can be investigated. 

Submissions
The Journal of Human-Technology Relations publishes:

  • editorials: brief article as an introduction to each edition of the journal, written either by the editorial board or by guest editors (maximum 5,000 words);
  • current affairs: short articles discussing topical issues and developments in technology and/or society with a clear link to human-technology relations, in the form of a news item, column, or any other brief format (maximum 2,000 words);
  • research articles: articles (including pictorials) presenting the results of original research (maximum 10,000 words); 
  • response articles: brief articles that discuss and comment on articles published previously (maximum 2,000 words);
  • student essays: articles that discuss the results of successful and innovative research done by Bachelor and Master students (maximum 5,000 words);
  • reviews: articles reviewing books, exhibitions, or performances related to human-technology relations (maximum 2,000 words)
  • book symposia:  articles in which up to four commentators critically discuss a recent and/or influential book, potentially with a reply by the author (maximum 10,000 words);
  • special issues: a collection of research articles dedicated to a specific theme or topic, edited by a guest editor.

All word limits exclude references and endnotes.

Article Processing Charges
Publishing in JHTR is completely free, so neither Submission Charges nor Article Processing Charge are required from the authors. The resources needed to run the journal are covered by the institutions where the (associate) editors are employed, mostly in the form of time invested.

Open Access Policy 

JHTR is an open access journal licensed under a CC-BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence. This means that all content is available without paywalls.  Anyone is free to share (to copy, distribute, and transmit the work), to remix (to adapt the work) under the following conditions:

  • The original authors must be given credit.
  • For any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are
  • Any of these conditions can be waived if the copyright holders give permission.
  • Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author's moral rights.

Copyright policy

  • Authors retain their copyrights.
  • If you are using published images, text or other materials, please be aware of copyright regulations. The TU Delft Copyright helpdesk can provide further information and answer your copyright questions.
  • In case of (alleged or proven) copyright breaches or scientific misconduct (e.g. fabricating data), <Journal Initials> will follow the developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

Peer-review policy

JHTR follows a double anonymized type of review for research articles and essays, where reviewer identity is not made visible to author, author identity is not made visible to reviewer, reviewer and author identity is visible to (decision-making) editor. Other types of submissions undergo editorial review in a single anonymized process, where reviewer identity is not made visible to author, author identity is visible to reviewer, reviewer and author identity is visible to (decision-making) editor. In all cases, during the review, reviewers interact with editor and no information about the review process or editorial decision process is published. The Journal is committed to a transparent review process that adheres to the COPE policy. Editors and reviewers are encouraged to join COPE individually and agree to declare any conflict of interest. 

The Editors-in-Chief and the editorial board may contribute to the published content, but a rigorous review workflow is implemented to ensure the integrity and quality of the review process. If one of the Editors-in-Chief or a member of the editorial board is listed as a (co)author, they will not be involved in the review process and will not access the reviewers' identity in the case of anonymous, single-blind or double-blind reviews. In instances where an Editor-in-Chief is a (co)author, the responsibility of selecting the editor who will handle the paper will fall on the (Co)editor-in-chief or another editor to maintain a fair and unbiased review process.

Research Data/Software
JHTR strongly supports that manuscripts include data/software registration in a recognized research data repository and will support data/software citation- please visit this page for more information.

Publication Ethics
JHTR aims to apply for COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) membership as soon as the journal has existed for one year. Until that moment we will act in the spirit of its guidelines when it comes to publication ethics. Editors, authors and publisher adopt the guidelines developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the fair data principles. The journal adheres to the COPE Core Practices and the principles of transparency as described in the Declaration on transparent editorial policies for academic journals.

Code of Conduct

Check TU Delft OPEN Publishing code of conduct and integrity policy.

Similarity check

A similarity check is part of the TU Delft OPEN Publishing standard publication procedure. Authors submitting their article to JHTR should expect their work to go through a similarity analysis at any stage of the workflow. All articles submitted are checked with iThenticate software. The editor and publisher carefully analyse the reports. In case of suspected plagiarism, the authors will have two weeks to provide an explanation.

The Journal also checks for AI-generated content. Articles will be rejected unless using AI-generated tools is part of the work and is clarified (see below).

Use of AI 
The use of AI technologies in writing is gaining popularity. When used responsibly and appropriately in the context of human-driven research, it can facilitate innovation. However, authors remain responsible and accountable for the quality and content of their manuscripts, and these responsibilities remain uniquely human. With this in mind, JHTR asks that the authors do not list AI as a co-author, and disclose any use of AI tools (e.g. generative language-based, such as ChatGPT and others, for generation of images, etc.) in the writing of their manuscripts. If applicable, acknowledge how you use AI tools for your article at the bottom of the References section and in the Acknowledgements section, and separately, in the cover letter submitted before the review process. This policy is subject to review based on new developments.
 

Complaints and appeals

Complaints

Complaints such as misconduct, authorship dispute, or suspected conflict of interest should be brought to the attention of the publisher (publishing-lib@tudelft.nl) or the editorial board.

Author appeal 

If an author wishes to appeal an editorial decision, the author may contact the Editors-in-Chief of the Journal. Their appeal decisions are final. This means that discussing or negotiating the final decision will be without effect and can be ignored.  

Conflict of interest

All COIs will be handled as follows by the journal in first instance, then the publisher:

  • Disclosure: Anyone (editors, reviewers, authors and any other relevant parties) involved in the publishing process should disclose any potential conflicts of interest they may have.
  • Evaluation: After disclosing the potential COI, it needs to be examined to determine how important it is and its possible impact on the publication process.
  • Management: An identified COI requires appropriate steps. Those steps may include stepping back from certain duties or decisions, removal from the publication process, or take other actions to reduce the conflict.
  • Transparency: Any identified conflicts of interest should be transparently disclosed to relevant parties, including readers, authors, and reviewers.
  • COI can be mentioned after the section Acknowledgment of the publication.

Publication notices and changes

Any changes made to the published content will be accompanied by a post-publication notice. which will be permanently linked to the original content.

Publication notices include errors introduced by the journal (erratum), an author error (corrigendum), adding a (small) document to a published work to provide additional information (addendum), and retraction.

The Editors-in-Chief and the publisher handle publication notices through the following steps:

  • Reviewing the proposed changes to the published content to determine if they are necessary and appropriate.
  • Preparing a post-publication notice that accurately reflects the changes made to the content.
  • Linking the post-publication notice to the original content in a clear and prominent manner.
  • Distributing the updated content and the post-publication notice to relevant parties, including subscribers, indexers, and other databases.
  • Monitoring the impact of the changes on the academic record and making any necessary further updates or corrections.

Authorship

All co-authors must agree to submit the work to the journal. For author dispute, see the “Complaints and Appeals” section above.

How to add extra authors before publication:

  • All co-authors must agree to add new (co)authors to the publication.
  • Agreement must be collected and sent to the editor with an explanation.

Guest Editors/ Special Issues

JHTR  requires an agreement between the Guest Editor(s) and the Editors-in-Chief, where the Guest Editor(s)’s role is clearly defined. Guest Editors are subject to the same rules as editors of JHTR and adhere to TU Delft OPEN Publishing policies.

Publication Model
JHTR holds the Continuous Publication Model, which means that the journal will publish an article for an issue as and when that article is accepted, rather than waiting for all articles intended for that issue to be ready.

Metadata

JHTR  grants you the right to publish the metadata of the series, its issues, and articles under the terms of the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0).

Archiving
JHTR utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the Journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...

Authors are allowed to deposit a Submitted version, an Accepted version (Author Accepted Manuscript), and a Published version (Version of record) of their work in an institutional or any other repository of their choice.

TU Delft OPEN Publishing is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research. We work in partnership with organizations and maintain our own digital archive. 

Indexing
TU Delft OPEN Publishing will ensure that JHTR will be listed as soon as possible in the various indexing systems (like Google Scholar, Web of Science, Scopus and DOAJ), such that all published papers can (retroactively) be subject to impact evaluation. 

Privacy Statement
The names and email addresses entered in this Journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this Journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed in our published content are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views and opinions of TU Delft OPEN Publishing.  

The responsibility of the content provided is exclusively of the author(s) concerned. TU Delft OPEN Publishing, JHTR, the editors, and reviewers are not responsible for errors in the contents or any consequences arising from the use of information contained in it.

The opinions expressed in the publications of JHTR do not necessarily represent the views of TU Delft OPEN Publishing and the editors.   

We follow an open access publishing principle, in which author(s) are the sole owners of the copyright of the content published. For any omissions, copyright violations only author(s) of the concerned article are responsible. Our responsibility is limited only to the removal of the concerned article from JHTR once the query is raised.

Images
Header and cover images made by Buro ten Dam

ISSN
2773-2266 (online)

Publisher
TU Delft OPEN Publishing

JHTR was originally financially and organisationally supported by the University of Twente