Announcements

MDPI would like to invite all Guest Editors, as esteemed experts in their respective disciplines, to participate in the 7th MDPI Guest Editor Club. This forum intends to highlight exciting topics in a comprehensive yet efficient manner to allow Guest Editors from all over the world to present their experiences and discuss their achievements.

The Guest Editor Club will bring together a worldwide group of multi-disciplinary Guest Editors to present and exchange their breakthrough ideas which have been reported in MDPI’s Special Issues. We have, therefore, put together this platform to facilitate your interactions with the journal and lead you through the most important aspects of the role and what you can expect from the process of editing a Special Issue. We are pleased to provide an excellent opportunity for all our Guest Editors to propose and develop new approaches, exchange perspectives, and encourage new lines of research.

We will record the presentations, with prior consent obtained from the lecturers, and upload them to our online database. We will continue to build this database with brief introductions and summaries of topics and will open an online discussion group for each GE. We hope that this event will be of interest to you, and we welcome you to join us at this forum.

We are very much looking forward to seeing you at the 7th MDPI Guest Editor Club 2025. Please find below an up-to-date outline of the presenters.

Date: 30 July 2025 at 9:00 a.m. CEST | 9:00 p.m. EDT | 3:00 p.m. CST Asia
Webinar ID: 889 2623 3305

Register now for free!

Program:

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information on how to join the webinar. Registrations using academic institutional email addresses will be prioritized.

Unable to attend? Register anyway and we will inform you when the recording is available.

Keynote Speakers:

• Dr. David Campbell, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria;
• Dr. Roberto Teggi, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milano, Italy;
• Dr. Konstantin Zioutas, University of Patras, Patras, Greece;
• Ms. Mary O'Sullivan, Journal Relations Specialist, MDPI.

We are excited to invite you to a webinar led by the University of New Mexico and MDPI's open access journal Social Sciences (ISSN: 2076-0760), which will provide you with guidance on how to submit manuscripts to Social Sciences that promise to have a high impact on the scholarship in your research area.

We will provide this workshop in the context of our call for papers for a Special Issue in the Social Sciences journal entitled “Restorative Justice Practices in Higher Education and the Arts: Addressing Complex Legacies of Harm”. This Special Issue is informed by restorative justice practices, the scholarship of feminist decoloniality, and the history of higher education and the arts. We will facilitate discussions on universities confronting their past within social movements for educational equity and the arts, and the agency of creators and learners who demand their rightful place.

Articles in this Special Issue examine the experiences of groups that have been marginalized in higher education and the arts. Authors argue that complex legacies of harm, such as race, culture, citizenship, state and tribal sovereignty, globalization, and disability, require both personal and institutional reflexivity to unveil multidimensional experiences of perpetrators and survivors. We aim to publish the works of those charting a way forward to move beyond acknowledgment to correcting harm in higher education and the arts. It is our hope that this authors’ webinar will support contributors in this task.

Date: 5 August 2025
Time: 5:00 p.m. CEST | 9:00 a.m. MDT
Webinar ID: 891 1354 5300
Webinar Secretariat: journal.webinar@mdpi.com
Webinar announcement: https://sciforum.net/event/SocialSciences-1

Register now for free!

Program:

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information on how to join the webinar. Registrations with academic or institutional email addresses will be prioritized. 

Unable to attend? Feel free to still register; we will inform you when the recording is available.

Webinar Chair and Keynote Speakers:

• Prof. Dr. Assata Zerai, Department of Sociology and Criminology, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA;
• Prof. Dr. Teresa Neely, College of University Libraries and Learning Sciences, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA;
• Ms. Mariann Skahan, Department of Anthropology, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA;
• Prof. Dr. Kathy Powers, UNM Political Science, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA;
• Ms. Pamela Agoyo, Division of Student Affairs, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA;
• Prof. Dr. Daniel McCarthy, Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK.

Relevant Special Issue:
“Restorative Justice Practices Within Higher Education and the Arts: Addressing Complex Legacies of Harm”
Guest Editors: Prof. Dr. Assata Zerai, Prof. Dr. Teresa Neely, Dr. Kathy Powers, Ms. Mariann Skahan and Ms. Pamela Agoyo
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 17 October 2025

This Special Issue of Social Sciences belongs to the Section “Crime and Justice”.

Name: Prof. Dr. Jill Koyama
Affiliation: Division of Educational Leadership & Innovation, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Farmer Education Bldg. #402N, Arizona State University, 1050 S Forest Mall, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA
Interests: refugee/(im)migrant education; ethnography; anthropology of education; critical education policy; actor-network theory

1st Edition: Special Issue: Teaching and Learning in Refugee and Migrant Communities Worldwide
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci/special_issues/64ADQHG1S0

2nd Edition: Call for Papers: "Policy and Policing: The Governance of Refugee and Migrant Education in an Age of Hostility – Second Edition"
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci/special_issues/YF7WWQ7Z91

The following is a short interview with Prof. Dr. Jill Koyama:

1. Can you share how your academic journey began and what inspired you to pursue your current field of research?
Thank you for this opportunity to talk about it. My main research areas are refugees, immigrants, education, and policy, and I think several things in my life brought me to this particular intellectual curiosity. Part of it is just my upbringing. I come from an immigrant family, and my Japanese family—part of them—were interned during the war, and I always knew that people could be treated differently and have different experiences based on language, ethnicity, and nationality. So that was always present in my thinking, but maybe not always active when I was younger.
And then I was really fortunate to work at a community college with refugees from Cambodia and Vietnam. That was my first real long-term engagement with refugees, and I realized how different they were and their experiences were from other types of migrants. I think that was my first introduction, and then after that, I just found myself seeking out ways to learn more about people who came from other places. So I think it has been a circuitous path; it wasn’t very linear. I came into academia later than most of my colleagues, and didn't go to get my doctorate until my mid-to-late 30s.

2. What emerging trends or frontiers in your field do you believe hold the most promise for advancing the area?
I think it’s quite an interesting area of scholarship, and part of doing the Special Issue was my excitement in reading some of this new scholarship. But I think two areas interest me most, or I think are most promising to change. One is the policy area; a lot more people are looking at global policy and challenging some of the assumptions about refugees and the way that they're positioned there. Many people are looking at state- and local-level policies, and so I think critical policy research can be quite potentially transformative.
The other part is looking at what refugees themselves are doing. We often look at institutions and education, but what are the refugees doing? They're doing all kinds of things despite all the challenges we put in front of them, and I think that's interesting to learn from them what they're doing. They're creating entire resource networks, they are starting businesses, they are creating day cares and after-school programs, and all kinds of things that are very community and culturally relevant and culturally based. I think that's exciting and that we could learn from them; governments could learn from that.

3. Could you share any memorable experiences or lessons learned from publishing in journals or collaborating on edited volumes?
Sure. I think you know I am near the end of my career, which is great, but I think that I’m still learning, right? I am also an editor of another journal, Anthropology and Education Quarterly Journal, and I have learned a lot about publishing as an entity: everything from buying a DOI to how our archives are kept; publishing is not just a journal. That Special Issue that you see, there are so many people and so much behind that. Revealing that process to me has been interesting, and it's made me appreciate more the way in which we're able to distribute knowledge and share it. I also think that—I joke that many Special Issues, even ones that I have worked on, are not so special, and yet what is so special about these? But then some are.
I had that experience working with Social Sciences that I wasn’t exactly sure about. You learn, you're not sure what it's going to look like. You have an idea, but you don't know what manuscripts you're going to get. You don't know who's going to contribute, and then when you start to get them and you see them completely in conversation with each other, it ends up being something much bigger. I think as a Special Issue, I feel it’s a great surprise and it's a wonderful, wonderful gift.
So I think that there's potential to learn, always to learn in publishing. I don't know what the future of publishing is. Will we have journals as we know them? We certainly don't have very many hard-copy journals anymore. Papers are published as they're accepted. It's really interesting to me the way that shifting our access to knowledge and the way that we distribute it. I do like Open Access online, I think that takes away some of the hierarchy of who gets access and who doesn't, and I think that there are opportunities to learn in every part. I like international collaborations like Social Sciences much more, because if not, we're just talking to each other; we know each other and we're just talking to each other, and that is useful for us, but not for the useful for the world.

4. What’s your cooperation experience with Social Sciences? You edited two Special Issue editions? What can you share with us about the process?
I admit I didn’t know much about Social Sciences when I was first approached. I went through and did some reading of articles and everything, and I found them to be really quite diverse, which was nice. I mean voices that I hadn't known, scholars I hadn't known, from very emergent, beginning scholars to those who are quite well known in the field. I like that mix, and I thought, “Well, I would like to do this.” I didn't know what it the Special Issue was going to look like or how the process would work, but it is probably the most streamlined, efficient process from submission to review that I've ever worked in. I was so surprised. The staff, thankfully, would have to nudge me, “there's a manuscript sitting there”, and they were constantly in communication with me. There was one piece in particular that showed the integrity of the staff. The reviews were quite mixed, and there was some ethical concern; we went back and forth maybe four times in conversation, and, to their good credit, they were very open about what I had to say and what the author had to say. In the end, the author changed a few things, and then we were able to publish it. I think it would have been easier for them, probably to just say “no, we're not gonna publish this”, and I never felt any tension in that process. Even when I didn't agree with the reviewers, it was like colleagues who just had different opinions, and that was a productive and good experience for me. That isn't always the case with other publishers; often you just get a rejection or you get these reviews and there's no synthesis of them, and then that's it and you either change things, you revise it, or you don't.
And I didn't find it was this way with Social Sciences. The authors also commented that they would revise; another group of authors had to go back and forth on a few things, and each time their changes were deeply considered. I thought that was a good model, a good process. The reviews are also quick. As the special Guest Editor, I had a lot of control over the Special Issue, for example, picking reviewers or not picking reviewers—sometimes I would defer the task to the staff. And sometimes I would choose, and I just thought, “OK, that's great.”
It didn't have to be either/or, and I got to look at a piece two to four times, which I also don't think is very common. So I had a really good experience. I was thrilled when they asked if I wanted to do a second one, more focused on policy.

5. As an experienced scholar, what advice would you give to early career researchers in your field and the social sciences navigating today’s academic landscape/scenarios?
The good thing is that you said “scenarios”, plural, because it's just a changing landscape, right? Right now, in the US, in this context, higher education is under great assault. I would love for junior scholars and emerging scholars to be just bolder than I was. I was trained very classically, very traditionally in some ways, in anthropology, and I learnt very early on how to write a journal article, and it was kind of a formula; you knew the parts that would need to be included, and I wrote that way for quite some time, and it was only later where I was able to push some of that. I see junior scholars doing that more, pushing back against theory, pushing back a great deal, thankfully, on the very colonial type of thinking, going beyond qualitative methods and bringing in more feminist theories, queer theories, and critical race theory. They are blending them in ways that I don’t think I would have been brave enough to do; I wouldn't have felt like I knew what I was saying. I still don't think I sometimes know what I'm saying, and so I encourage them, but I also encourage them to just also respect the history and respect the scholarship. So yes, you can push back, you can move beyond, you can extend, you can critique, but also still acknowledge. I think sometimes that gets lost. Social sciences is one of the places where I think it doesn't get lost as much as other fields. I do think in psychology and anthropology, they are still there, there, like our totemic ancestors, and we still reference them. Even if we critique them.
I would encourage junior faculty to keep doing that. And then think about different ways of expressing our knowledge. I love visual anthropology, and I love creative submissions. I don't do that, but I have seen great works. A friend does comics; she creates comics. I think there are a lot of ways of showing our research that isn't always an article, but it can be an article plus, maybe plus a video, plus a film, plus something.

6. Looking ahead, what research questions or methodological innovations do you think will define the next decade in your field?
Well, I don’t know. I'll give you the anthropology answer. This is the anthropology answer: it depends.
It's like the default. It depends. I hope there will be fewer people in academia leading the research in my field and many more refugees and migrants and community organizations saying “we need to know this”, “can you come help design the study?”,  instead of us saying “we'd like to know more about you”. This way, I hope, will lead to a greater collaboration. Some people might call it participatory action. But something that is driven by the communities and people that it will mostly affect, that's what I'd like to see. I can't even imagine some of the research that's going to be done because I think about AI and enhanced learning, and some of that, which I find exciting. I don't use it very much, and that's another thing. Social Sciences was the only one that ever asked me if I used AI in any way. I think that’s a good question; I thought everyone should ask that, right? It's not bad, but we should all be talking about that, like “here's the way I used it.” I think that will become more prevalent. I can only imagine doing all kinds of research where you're not actually at the place, maybe not in the country, which would be odd for me as an ethnographer, it would be odd not to go.
But I can imagine that happening. And I know in our country, for the foreseeable future, there'll be less government-sponsored research. So, who's going to sponsor this research, and what is going to be their commitment and ethical concern, and will there be financial gain? I think those are all questions that we're going to be grappling with as governments step back from their support of research.

In this issue, Social Sciences (ISSN: 2076-0760) is honored to feature Prof. Dr. Xiaoling Shu, Section Editor-in-Chief of the journal. In this conversation, Prof. Dr. Shu shares her unique experiences as a woman in the academic ecosystem, emphasizes the importance of confidence and empowerment for women in both personal and professional realms, and offers profound insights into academic research.

Prof. Dr. Xiaoling Shu is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis. She holds an MS in computer science and a PhD in sociology from the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on how two major contemporary forces—marketization and globalization—affect gender inequality, well-being, and gendered patterns in family, marriage, sexuality, and attitudes. She uses data science approaches to conduct country-specific (China, the U.S., and the U.K.) and cross-national analyses. She is the author of Knowledge Discovery in the Social Sciences: A Data Mining Approach (University of California Press) and Chinese Marriages in Transition: From Patriarchy to New Familism (Rutgers University Press). Her work has appeared in leading journals, such as Social Forces, Social Science Research, Sociology of Education, Journal of Marriage and Family, Social Science & Medicine, Social Science Quarterly, Sex Roles, Journal of Happiness Studies, Chinese Sociological Review, and Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. She has served as Chair of the Asia and Asian America Section of the American Sociological Association, President of the International Chinese Sociological Association, and Director of East Asian Studies at UC Davis.

The following is an interview with Prof. Dr. Xiaoling Shu:

1. The past three International Women’s Day themes have shifted from “Embrace Equity” to “Encourage Inclusion” and, most recently, “Accelerate Progress.” How do you interpret these changes?
This evolution is a very positive development. It not only reflects the growing global awareness of gender equality but also marks a transition from advocacy to action. Increasingly, women are assuming critical roles in various fields. In academia, we can pay closer attention to key areas such as the distribution of research resources and gender diversity in editorial boards, all of which are crucial for fostering structural changes toward greater equity.

2. As a scholar with deep academic roots in computer science, linguistics, and sociology, how did you initially decide to pursue social science research? How did you gradually build your own independent research direction over your academic career?
My academic journey is the result of both historical context and personal interest. In the 1990s, I went to the U.S. to pursue graduate studies in sociology. Though I had been steered into the humanities during high school, my school provided strong training in mathematics, which sparked my interest in statistics and computer science. During my doctoral studies, I took a theoretical statistics course in the statistics department and realized the potential of integrating computer science and statistics into sociological research. This prompted me to take additional courses in computer science, such as programming in C/C++, numerical analysis, graph theory, computer networks, and the theory of artificial intelligence.
Over time, I foresaw the enormous potential of applying computer technologies—especially AI—to sociology for data mining and model development. At that time, very few researchers were working in this field. But with the advancement of technology, especially AI and big data, interdisciplinary research has become a mainstream trend. The growing interest and recognition of this field validate its forward-looking nature and great potential.

3. What strategies do you think young female scholars should adopt to accelerate the process of achieving academic independence?
Many female scholars tend to underestimate themselves and place limits on their self-perception, whereas men often display greater self-confidence in self-assessment. In reality, I have seen many outstanding women in academia. My advice is for female scholars to believe in themselves more, be bold in showcasing their abilities, and have the courage and determination to overcome external doubts—even from family members—who may underestimate their potential.
The academic path is a long one. It requires perseverance, self-belief, and a genuine passion for research. Stay committed to your field of interest, work diligently and deeply, and continue to develop yourself. Only then can you make your voice heard and your influence felt in academia.

4. Over the past two decades, what notable positive changes have you observed in academic support and opportunities for women, especially in research? What unique strengths do female researchers bring to academic leadership?
Over the past 20 years, we’ve seen a steady increase in the number of women in academia, particularly in research. However, many women still hesitate when it comes to pursuing leadership roles. I encourage women scholars to actively seek leadership opportunities and to demonstrate their leadership skills.
Although administrative and service work demands time and energy, it also provides the chance to shape academic directions, influence personnel decisions, and expand one’s professional horizons. Female scholars often excel in adaptability, multitasking, and innovative thinking, especially in balancing work and life. These qualities are unique strengths in the research arena.

5. As we wrap up this interview, do you have any additional thoughts you would like to share with MDPI readers to promote gender equality and the growth of the academic community?
I hope that all academic professionals maintain a sense of purity and passion for research. To young women scholars, especially, my advice is to keep your curiosity, courage, and original aspirations alive. The academic journey is full of challenges, but the greatest motivation comes from within—from the excitement of tackling complex problems and the deep desire to understand the world—not from external rewards such as money or fame, which are ultimately unsustainable.
It is this inner drive that sustains our long-term dedication to research, year after year, and enables us to overcome obstacles. The most valuable reward is the new, deeper understanding of human behavior and social patterns that we gain along the way. I also encourage everyone to explore widely, develop diverse skill sets, stay forward-looking, and harness the strengths of interdisciplinary approaches to stay ahead of the times.

Looking Ahead
As Social Sciences enters its second decade of publication, we are deeply grateful to our readers, authors, Editorial Board Members, reviewers, and editors for their contributions to the journal’s growth. We hope to see more women engage in academic research and contribute to the scholarly community. We look forward to your continued support, guidance, and collaboration in the future development of Social Sciences.

Finally, we extend our sincere thanks to Prof. Dr. Xiaoling Shu for taking time out of her busy schedule to speak with us. We are also grateful for her support and advice regarding the development of the journal. We wish her continued health and success in her academic endeavors in the coming year.

Prof. Dr. Xiaoling Shu (first from the left) with journal staff at the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting.

About the Section
“Family Studies” is one of 12 thematic Sections of the journal Social Sciences. The Section is currently supported by an Editorial Board of nine renowned scholars from around the world, including Prof. Dr. Xiaoling Shu from the University of California, Davis; Prof. Dr. Morten Blekesaune from the University of Agder, Norway; Prof. Dr. Nancy Luke from Pennsylvania State University; and Dr. Steven Sheldon from Johns Hopkins University. As of June 2025, the Section has published 155 papers.

World Population Day is an annual event, observed on 11 July every year, aiming to raise awareness of global population issues. The event was established by the Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme in 1989. It was inspired by the public interest in Five Billion Day on 11 July 1987, the approximate date on which the world’s population reached five billion people. World Population Day aims to increase people’s awareness on various population issues such as the importance of family planning, gender equality, poverty, maternal health, and human rights.

The theme of World Population Day 2025 is “Empowering young people to create the families they want in a fair and hopeful world”. Global fertility rates are falling, prompting warnings about “population collapse”. But the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)’s State of World Population report shows that the real issue is a lack of reproductive agency—many people, especially young people, are unable to have the children they want. World Population Day 2025 highlights this challenge, focusing on the largest-ever generation of young people.

In celebration of this day, we invite you to explore a curation of insightful articles, journals, and Special Issues across various fields, including sociology, economics, human resources, and humanities. By sharing these findings, we call for ensuring that young have the rights, tools, and opportunities to shape their futures.

“The Marriage Behavior of the Greek Population from 1991 to 2021: A Study Through Gross Nuptiality Tables”
by Vasilis S. Gavalas
Genealogy 2025, 9(2), 32; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy9020032

“Indian “Boarding School” and Chinese “Bachelor Society”: Forced Isolation, Cultural Identity Erasure, and Literary Resilience in American Ethnic Literatures”
by Li Song
Humanities 2025, 14(4), 68; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14040068

“Forecasting Daily Activity Plans of a Synthetic Population in an Upcoming District”
by Rachid Belaroussi and Younes Delhoum
Forecasting 2024, 6(2), 378-403; https://doi.org/10.3390/forecast6020021

“Notes toward a Demographic History of the Jews”
by Sergio DellaPergola
Genealogy 2024, 8(1), 2; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8010002

“Creating Sustainable Climate Change Havens for Migrating Populations in the United States and Other Global Sites”
by Elizabeth C. Hirschman
Soc. Sci. 2023, 12(12), 663; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12120663

“World Population Growth: A Once and Future Global Concern”
by Karl-Erik Norrman
World 2023, 4(4), 684-697; https://doi.org/10.3390/world4040043

“Demographic Delusions: World Population Growth Is Exceeding Most Projections and Jeopardising Scenarios for Sustainable Futures”
by Jane N. O’Sullivan
World 2023, 4(3), 545-568; https://doi.org/10.3390/world4030034

“What If Moms Quiet Quit? The Role of Maternity Leave Policy in Working Mothers’ Quiet Quitting Behaviors”
by Tingting Zhang and Chloe Rodrigue
Merits 2023, 3(1), 186-205; https://doi.org/10.3390/merits3010012

“Does Civic Engagement Support Relational and Mental Health of Urban Population?”
by Michal Hrivnák, Peter Moritz, Katarína Melichová and Soňa Bellérová
Societies 2023, 13(2), 46; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc13020046

“The Construction of the “Older Worker””
by Hannes Zacher and Cort W. Rudolph
Merits 2023, 3(1), 115-130; https://doi.org/10.3390/merits3010007

We are pleased to announce that the 1st International Online Conference on Education Sciences (IOCES 2026) is scheduled to take place online from 15 to 17 June 2026. The conference, organized by MDPI’s Education Sciences (ISSN: 2227-7102, Impact Factor: 2.6), will focus on current and emerging research in education, spanning the period from early childhood to higher education.

For this upcoming event, it is our pleasure to announce the following conference chair.

Conference Chair:

• Prof. Dr. Daniel Muijs, School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work, Queen’s University Belfast, United Kingdom.

Topics of interest:
S1. Technology-Enhanced Education;
S2. Higher Education;
S3. Curriculum and Instruction;
S4. Special and Inclusive Education;
S5. STEM Education;
S6. Teacher Education.

Conference awards:

• Best Oral Presentation Award;
• Best Poster Award.

Prizes:

• Full waiver of the APC for papers published in Education Sciences;
• A certificate celebrating this achievement.

Guide for authors:
Please submit your abstract before 18 February 2026 at the following link: https://sciforum.net/user/submission/create/1473.

You can register for this event for free before 10 June 2026 at the following link: https://sciforum.net/event/IOCES2026?section=#registration.

For more information, please visit the following website:
https://sciforum.net/event/IOCES2026?section=#instructions.

We look forward to receiving your contribution to IOCES 2026.

IOCES 2026 Organizing Team (ioces2026@mdpi.com)

Six new journals covering a range of subjects launched their inaugural issues in June 2025. We are excited to be able to share with you the newest research rooted in the value of open access. We are pleased to present the latest research and to make it accessible to all.

We extend our sincere thanks to all the Editorial Board Members for their commitment and expertise. Each journal is dedicated to upholding strong editorial standards through a thorough peer review process, ensuring impactful open access scholarship.

Please feel free to browse and discover more about the new journals below.

Journal	Founding Editor-in-Chief	Journal Topics (Selected)
	Prof. Dr. Chang-Pu Sun, China Academy of Engineering Physics, Beijing, China; Computational Science Research Center, China Editorial | View inaugural issue	quantum information and phenomena; condensed matter physics and statistical physics; atomic, molecular, and optical physics; computational physics and mathematical methods View journal scope | Submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Hualiang Lin, Sun Yat-sen University, China; Prof. Dr. Jose L. Domingo, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain Editorial | View inaugural issue	green and organic food; green infrastructures; green exercise; environmental impact of the healthcare sector; effects of climate change on human health | View journal scope | Submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Francesco Veglio, University of L’Aquila, Italy Editorial | View inaugural issue	ultra-pure substances; water purification; air purification; gas purification; inorganic chemical purification; purification technologies View journal scope | Submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Junxing Zheng, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China Editorial | View inaugural issue	computer-aided design and engineering; artificial intelligence and machine learning; building information modeling (BIM) and digital twins; robotics and automation in construction; smart sensors and Internet of Things (IoT); intelligent control systems and facilities management View journal scope | Submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Assunta Di Vaio, University of Naples Parthenope, Italy Editorial | View inaugural issue	sustainability, managerial, and biodiversity accounting; carbon management accounting; corporate social responsibility; artificial intelligence and disclosure View journal scope | Submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Changjun Liu, Sichuan University, China Editorial | View inaugural issue	bioeffects of electromagnetic waves; electromagnetic science and engineering; microwave, millimeter-wave, and terahertz technologies; metamaterials and metasurfaces; communication, sensing, and networks; energy, power, and sustainable applications; quantum and emerging technologies; artificial intelligence and advanced fabrication View journal scope | Submit an article

On 19 June 2015, the United Nations General Assembly (A/RES/69/293) proclaimed 19 June of each year as the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict in order to raise awareness for the need to put an end to conflict-related sexual violence, to honour the victims and survivors of sexual violence around the world, and to pay tribute to all those who have courageously devoted their lives to and lost their lives in standing up for the eradication of these crimes. This date was chosen to commemorate the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1820 (2008) on 19 June 2008, in which the Council condemned sexual violence as a tactic of war and as an impediment to peacebuilding.

Conflict-related sexual violence is a war crime, a crime against humanity, and a constituent act of genocide under international law, posing threats to individual and collective security and hindering lasting peace. Its impacts are far-reaching, causing physical and psychological trauma, stigma, and poverty that can affect survivors and their families for generations. In some communities, survivors may face ostracization, which limits their access to vital social support and healing resources.

As a global community, we must seek to examine the long-term effects of conflict-related sexual violence. We need to widen the aperture to illustrate how conflict-related sexual violence affects families and communities across time and space. If left unaddressed, its harm compounds over time.

To commemorate this day, we invite you to explore a selection of insightful articles, journals, and Special Issues across various fields, including social sciences, humanities, behavioural sciences, and psychology. By sharing these findings, we hope to provide an opportunity to understand the devastating impact of conflict-related sexual violence on survivors and societies and call for mental health and psychosocial support for survivors.

“Do People Judge Sexual Harassment Differently Based on the Type of Job a Victim Has?”
by Carolyne Georgiana Halfon, Destiny McCray and Danica Kulibert
Behav. Sci. 2025, 15(6), 757; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15060757

“Overcoming Sexual Harassment at University: The Case of the Training Intervention in the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona”
by Olga Serradell and Lidia Puigvert
Behav. Sci. 2025, 15(5), 596; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15050596

“Make a Move: A Multi-Method, Quasi-Experimental Study of a Program Targeting Psychosexual Health and Sexual/Dating Violence for Dutch Male Adolescents”
by Mirthe C. Verbeek, Daphne van de Bongardt, Maartje P. C. M. Luijk and Joyce Weeland
Youth 2025, 5(2), 41; https://doi.org/10.3390/youth5020041

“Psychometric Properties of Instruments for Perpetration and Victimization of Dating Violence in Young People: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis”
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“Impact of Rape and Sexual Violence on the Relationships of Survivors” Guest Editor: Dr. Buuma Maisha Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2025	“Psychological Research on Sexual and Social Relationships” Guest Editor: Prof. Dr. Chiara Rollero Deadline for manuscript submissions: 18 February 2026

We are pleased to share that Social Sciences (ISSN: 2076-0760) has received an increased CiteScore of 3.1 in June 2025. The CiteScore ranks the journal 85 out of 285 titles (Q2) in the “Social Sciences” category, an impressive achievement for a journal running in Volume 14.

You can find more statistics on our website.

The current CiteScores measure the average number of citations within a journal over a four-year window (2021–2024). The Scopus database provides a comprehensive suite of metrics that support informed publishing strategies, research evaluation and enable benchmarking of journal performance.

This achievement reflects the collective efforts of our authors, reviewers, and editors. Together we will continue to track the progress of Social Sciences and its growing impact in social sciences.