Culturomics: New Interdisciplinary Advances for Research on Culture and Human Sustainable Development

Dear Colleagues,

The sustainable development of human society faces a series of major challenges, including climate change, disease threats, and armed conflicts—issues that require collective global attention and cooperation. Addressing this issue requires interdisciplinary collaboration and joint efforts across numerous fields, including  psychology, anthropology, sociology, management, political science, genetics, neuroscience, ecology, environmental science, earth science, atmospheric science, marine science, public health, information science, and data science.

Culture, defined as the shared cognitive, emotional, and behavioral norms among individuals within human groups, is a vital construct developed by human societies for social adaptation and governance. It plays a critical role in achieving sustainable development. Cultural diversity across the globe is closely linked to how humans adapt to varying natural and social environments.

The theory of culturomics advocates for integrating cutting-edge methods and technologies from across the natural and social sciences to conduct cross-scale, interdisciplinary research on culture. This approach seeks to enhance our understanding of cultural representations at different levels and promote recognition of the high-dimensional, holistic nature of culture.

In light of these premises, this Special Issue aims to advance the literature on culture and human sustainable development from interdisciplinary perspectives. We therefore welcome both review, meta-analysis, and empirical studies as contributions that explore the following:

• The emergence of cultural norms;
• Cultural structures and dimensions;
• The influence of culture on individual cognition, emotion, attitude and behavior;
• Genetic and neural foundations of cultural values;
• Gene-culture coevolution;
• Social and cultural change;
• The role of culture in human adaptation to earth and the natural environment;
• Co-evolution and interaction between culture, society, and nature;
• Applications of large language models in cultural studies;
• Cultural characteristics in future human–AI hybrid societies;
• Novel methods and technologies in cultural research.

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Behavioral Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Dr. Siyang Luo
Dr. Yiyi Zhu
Dr. Peng Lin
Dr. Liqin Huang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Behavioral Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• culturomics
• social change
• cultural change
• social adaptation
• interdisciplinary science
• social attitude
• social decision making