Humanités numériques is a French-language journal devoted to the scholarly uses of digital technology in the humanities and social sciences. It aims to offer a space for digital humanities researchers and teachers to participate in scientific debate and discussion. It is intended for specialists in the humanities, social sciences and disciplines related to information technology, as well as anyone who feels concerned by the digital transformations of knowledge.

Humanités numériques is an open digital journal, both in its willingness to represent diverse points of view and in its choice of open access publication. It is sponsored by the francophone association Humanistica and was conceived as a collective response to the opening demand of the 2010 Manifeste des Digital Humanities, the first French-speaking expression of this movement: in order for “a community of practice that is solidary, open, welcoming and freely accessible” to be formed, acknowledged and recognised, we need a common culture, developed in French but in constant contact with the productions of other linguistic areas, based on references and discussions of a different kind than those of seminars, conferences, mailing lists, blogs or social networks.

The encounter of the human and social sciences with computing, computer science and digital culture is grounded in more than half a century of research and, beyond that, to the millenary metamorphoses of information technologies. Taking into account this history, or rather these national and local histories, is indeed one of the recent orientations of the digital humanities, which – once we fully acknowledge their variety – include reflecting on infrastructures, standards and tools as well as discussing collaborative projects, making theoretical proposals as well as exploring the history of technology, studying modalities of access and dissemination as well as devising methods of analysis, describing current computer practices as well as envisioning new epistemic cultures, presenting the challenges of institutionalisation as well as criticising fashions or ideologies. This is deliberately an open-ended inventory, because we are living in a time of transition for research and teaching, in which the digital humanities constitute above all, in our view, a zone of exchange between disciplines, between professions, between cultures. This journal intends to stimulate such a reinvention.

Experimentation, reflexivity, hybridisation, dialogue: these are the key words of the scientific adventure we want to support, avoiding technophile illusions and technocratic irenicism, but with the enthusiasm and the taste for discovery that most often characterise work in this field. We publish authors and actors who are willing to objectivise, chronicle and criticise, in the richest sense of the word, the evolution of their practices and thinking.

The journal is published on the OpenEdition Journals platform, with the support of Humanistica, the francophone association for Digital Humanities, the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, the Institut des sciences humaines et sociales of the CNRS and the Maison des sciences de l’homme en Bretagne. The Presses universitaires de Liège and Lyon III University also contributed to its creation.