Comments on: "Nature" for humanities?

Question: "Nature" for humanities?

dontjumplarry — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 16:47:01 -0800

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 17:13:55 -0800

Psychology is present in Nature. Sociology also gets into Nature from time to time. Social Sciences are STEM by definition and usually considered as such at most schools. The humanities tend to publish in such a wide variety of ways it would be pretty tough to aggregate but aldaily.com is one source I can think of that gives little summaries of interesting humanities stuff.

By: kylej

kylej — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 17:37:51 -0800

In my experience (and at least at my university), social sciences are not considered a part of the STEM fields.

By: Superplin

Superplin — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 17:41:23 -0800

In my experience (and at least at my university), social sciences are not considered a part of the STEM fields.

As a social scientist, this corresponds to my experience as well. I'm not in a STEM field by pretty much any stretch--at least, I don't consider myself to be, and I'm pretty sure any physicist or mathematician would agree.

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any kind of aggregating, popularizing publication of the kind the OP is asking about. I wish there were!

By: Maxwell_Smart

Maxwell_Smart — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 17:56:22 -0800

I don't think I have the perfect answer for you, but I can think of a couple of resources that you might like to check out.

One is Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Another place to check out is the "omnivore" from bookforum. Most of the links are to articles written for a general audience, but still seem very academic-ish in terms of subject matter, presentation, and authorship.

By: shivohum

shivohum — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 18:17:07 -0800

Is there an equivalent of "Nature" for the humanities and social sciences? I'm looking for a magazine or blog that curates notable scholarly papers from non-STEM disciplines (philosophy/sociology/psychology/cultural studies/etc) for a wider audience.

Well, just to be clear, Nature (and its American counterpart, Science) doesn't curate a selection of papers published in other journals: it publishes the articles itself.

Also, Nature and Science are still mostly read by academics and researchers, not the broader public. I don't know of any journal with the same prestige and visibility that's addressed to humanities academics in general.

The broader public reads stuff in Scientific American or Popular Science or Discover rather than Nature or Science.

Similarly, for the humanities, publications that are truly addressed to the (somewhat) broader public but cover some of the academic scene might various reviews of books (New York, London, Boston, Montreal, Los Angeles, Jewish), The New Republic, The Guardian, The New Criterion, and somewhat more specific publications like Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy.

By: grouse

grouse — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 18:40:36 -0800

Well, just to be clear, Nature (and its American counterpart, Science) doesn't curate a selection of papers published in other journals: it publishes the articles itself.

To a small extent, Nature and Science also select articles from other journals, which are often summarized in the front half of the magazine. But yes, the top research in Nature is published in Nature itself.

By: AwkwardPause

AwkwardPause — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 18:51:13 -0800

Came in to suggest Daedalus as well.

By: dontjumplarry

dontjumplarry — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 19:04:54 -0800

Thanks for the suggestions.

I guess I don't mean an exact analogue to Nature. I had in mind the way that a generalist journal like Nature can provide, say, an entomologist a taster of what's happening in conservation biology or population biology or diabetes research or whatever.

By: seasparrow

seasparrow — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 19:22:15 -0800

Arts and Letters Daily is a blog that pretty much does exactly what you are looking for. Here is a pretty good 2005 article by the Guardian (UK) about the website. AL Daily has been around for a long time-- it was the 1999 "best website in the world" recognized the Observer (UK). The founder died a couple of years ago, but his partners have carried on keeping it updated, mostly without any loss of quality or coverage. It is the first place I found Malcolm Gladwell, before he was famous. Same with Theodore Dalrymple. That right there probably gives you an idea of the depth of coverage and the attention given to finding quality articles without regard for political partisanship. I check it at least once per week, and it the articles AL Daily links to have a real high percentage (for me) of being really interesting, and usually among the most significant things I've read all week. It is even laid out in the format you asked for.

By: seasparrow

seasparrow — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 19:23:42 -0800

I forgot to add that AL Daily is a mix of scholarly and more popular non-academic articles, so it may not actually be exactly what you are looking for.

By: shivohum

shivohum — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 19:33:33 -0800

I had in mind the way that a generalist journal like Nature can provide, say, an entomologist a taster of what's happening in conservation biology or population biology or diabetes research or whatever.

Hrmm.... some other possibilities:

The Chronicle of Higher Education's Percolator blog ("Research that matters")

For that matter, the Chronicle's blogs generally.

Also, the top SSRN papers

By: shothotbot

shothotbot — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 19:37:37 -0800

Within economics there the Journal of Economic Perspectives, which should be readable by a motivated layman. It is specifically designed to give non-specialist scholars a view on what is happening in sub-fields. Many of the most interesting things are put out as an NBER working paper and the NBER Digest translates 4-6 a month from Economics into English.

By: threeants

threeants — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 19:32:37 -0800

I believe it's written by staff instead of featuring peer-reviewed articles, but National Geographic is a bit along these lines.