Futures

Futures:

For the interdisciplinary study of futures, anticipation and foresight

Futures aims to build substantive research and knowledge about the relationships between humanity and its possible futures. It welcomes: new knowledge about humanity's diverse anticipatory practices and how to understand, challenge, develop or enhance them; novel futures-oriented research emerging at the intersections between and beyond disciplines that provides insights into humanity's (and posthumanity's) changing relationship with the future; and the highest quality scholarship in the field of futures/prospective studies.

Above all, it is a journal that seeks to analyse and challenge uses, misuses and abuses of futures, and to build robust knowledge about the conditions for creating socially just, sustainable and emancipatory futures.

In particular, Futures seeks to:

• Animate research interest in emerging questions of significance to the futures of humanity and of the planet
• Encourage dialogue across different fields and different knowledge traditions about the futures of cultures and societies, science and technology, economics and politics, environment and the planet, individuals and humanity
• Build greater understanding of human (and more-than-human) anticipatory beliefs, expectations, practices and behaviours - building insight into how futures are imagined and the implications of these models for the present
• Pluralise the worldviews and perspectives that inform scholarship on and about futures, in particular learning from the knowledges of those who have, hitherto, not been in positions of power and dominance
• Further develop the intellectual, ethical and empirical foundations of futures inquiry
• Strengthen the methodological development of professional practices in the futures field - including scenario planning, foresight, horizon scanning, as well as methods emerging from outside these traditions
• Engender high quality, responsible approaches to futures education - in schools, universities and professional and policy settings

About the Journal

• Futures was launched in 1968 to create a forum for the emerging field of Future Studies and is internationally recognised as a leading journal in the field
• Today, Futures is at the cutting edge of developments in the theory and practice of futures-oriented research across many disciplines, opening-up new ways of theorising, studying, challenging and cultivating human anticipation
• Futures acts as a point of encounter between the 50+ year history of Futures Studies and emerging interests in time and futures across many fields
• The journal is at the forefront of efforts to create more plural, democratic and sustainable futures through robust research, high quality scholarship and responsible practice
• Papers are subject to a rigorous double blind peer review process and are published soon after final acceptance

What is in scope/ out of scope for publishing with Futures

The journal welcomes papers that:

• Make a substantive contribution to knowledge in one or more of the following areas:
1. changing relationships between humanity and futures and/or
2. anticipatory processes - the uses of ideas of the future by individuals, organisations, systems and/or
3. the theory, ethics, methods and practices of futures, foresight and prospective and/or
4. the research and practice of futures education
• Are reflexive and transparent about the theories, assumptions and methods that are used to produce accounts of the future
• Have the potential to make a significant contribution to efforts to create more plural, democratic and sustainable futures - by providing new empirical or conceptual insights, challenging paradigms, assumptions and ideas
• Make a substantial contribution through exploring and informing thinking about futures in a particular domain, country or geographical region, i.e. 'futures of X' (previous examples include work, healthcare, existential risks, education, capitalism, communities, small business, food, governance, synthetic biology...)
• We actively welcome proposals for Special Issues from researchers seeking to create an interdisciplinary forum for topics and issues that do not yet have a settled disciplinary home

We are unable to publish papers that

• Simply advocate for a vision of a particular desired, possible or probable future, with no reflections on the basis for these claims, without transparency about the methods used to produce these claims, and with no inquiry into the consequences of these future images. For example, we cannot publish papers that simply state without rationale and robust supported argument - 'the future should be X'
• Simply describe a futures method or technique (e.g. we ran/made these scenarios or 'we did this survey') with no discussion of what happened because of this intervention, no reflection on the assumptions and theory that underpinned the approach, and no analysis of the contribution to the scholarship or practice already existing in the field
• Do not refer to futures or potential implications for the future in any way. For example, papers that simply describe technological improvements and efficiencies; papers that simply discuss methods, theories or innovations with no reference to their implications for humanity's relationship to futures or for developing futures-oriented research; or papers that do not explain why the proposed theory, method or innovation is of significance for human anticipatory capacities
• Do not engage with or contribute to the existing body of knowledge related to futures theory, research and practice