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Call for papers

The deadline for submissions was 15 June 2026. This call is now closed.

Themed issue description

Across the disciplines, the concepts of reproducibility and replicability have become essential pillars of methodological rigor. Yet, within the humanities, their meaning and practical realization remain contested. An exhortation by Peels (2019) for reproducibility and replicability in the humanities was met by strong opposition (Holbrook, Penders, & de Rijcke, 2019). Similar concerns were raised in a 2023 issue of the International Journal of Digital Humanities (Ries, van Dalen-Oskam & Offert, 2023; Joyeux-Prunel, 2023; Schöch, 2023), and in the 2024 Debates in the Digital Humanities volume Computational Humanities (Johnson, Tilton and Mimno). These conversations point the direction for more questions to be explored, on both technical and philosophical levels.

Code reuse and reproducibility is widely acknowledged as a desirable goal. Replicability is crucial to confirm conclusions, but the uptake of non-deterministic algorithms, and constantly changing datasets and models, make this a complex challenge. Large language models and other pretrained models exacerbate this issue, as they are highly susceptible to parameterization choices, subtle input perturbations, and stochastic sampling processes that can yield different outputs even with identical inputs. And what about reproducibility, more broadly construed? Should researchers in the computational humanities strive for a future where empirical claims are falsifiable and articles are retracted when disproven? Beyond the technical challenges, is reproducibility desirable in areas dominated by sophisticated disagreements, where interpretive frameworks are inherently dynamic and contextual, not to mention the possibility of speculative and counterfactual work?

This CHR themed issue invites contributions that explore these questions, and which consider reproducibility and replicability as both technical practices and epistemic commitments. We welcome theoretical reflections, methodological innovations, and case studies addressing the challenges and opportunities of making computational humanities research verifiable, explainable, and sustainable.

Topics of interest

• Data, code, and infrastructure, including data publication and versioning, writing and sharing code that is genuinely reproducible across systems and environments, and reproducibility in hybrid workflows that mix manual and automated steps.
• Methods and metrics, such as replicability in the presence of stochastic methods, testing and measurement, and explainability/interpretability.
• Conceptual and philosophical perspectives. How desirable is reproducibility in the computational humanities? What counts as verification?

Article Types

Authors can choose from several different article types for their contribution to this themed issue - see the Preparing your materials page for the full list of article types available.

If the article type selected is marked as 'by invitation/enquiry only', authors should contact the Guest Editors with a pre-submission enquiry.

Submission process

All submissions should be made via the CHR online peer review system. Authors should consult the journal’s Authors instructions  prior to submission.

Please note that all submissions should include links to associated data, code, or materials, whenever possible, and will be reviewed with attention to the transparency and reusability of their methods.

Contacts 

If you have questions about this themed issue, please reach out to the Guest Editors:

• Rebecca Sutton Koeser (Princeton University, USA): rebecca.s.koeser@princeton.edu
• Miguel Escobar Varela (National University of Singapore, Singapore): m.escobar@nus.edu.sg 

For any questions relating to editorial policy or the submission process, please contact the journal’s Editorial Office at chr@cambridge.org.

References

Johnson, J. M, Tilton, L. & Mimno, D. (eds). Computational Humanities (University of Minnesota Press, 2024).

Joyeux-Prunel, B. Digital humanities in the era of digital reproducibility: towards a fairest and post-computational framework. Int J Digit Humanities 6, 23–43 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42803-023-00079-6

Holbrook, J.B, Penders, B & de Rijcke, s. “The humanities do not need a replication drive”, Blog Post from the Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University (2019). https://cwts.nl/blog?article=n-r2v2a4&title=the-humanities-do-not-need-a-replication-drive

Peels, R. Replicability and replication in the humanities. Res Integr Peer Rev 4, 2 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-018-0060-4

Ries, T., van Dalen-Oskam, K. & Offert, F. Reproducibility and explainability in digital humanities. Int J Digit Humanities 5, 247–251 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42803-023-00078-7

Schöch, C. Repetitive research: a conceptual space and terminology of replication, reproduction, revision, reanalysis, reinvestigation and reuse in digital humanities. Int J Digit Humanities 5, 373–403 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42803-023-00073-y