About the Journal
Digital worlds. Decolonial questions.
Decolonial Digital Social Sciences (DDSS) is an independent, open-access journal examining how digital technologies shape knowledge, power, culture, and social life. We welcome scholarship that questions colonial hierarchies and takes situated ways of knowing seriously.
AI policy and governance — a priority research axis
DDSS prioritizes research on artificial intelligence policy and governance, including how rules, institutions and public decisions shape power, accountability and epistemic justice in AI. We welcome decolonial and critical social science approaches to these questions.
Focus and scope
DDSS brings decolonial inquiry into conversation with the social sciences and critical digital research. Contributions may address:
- AI policy and governance: regulation, public policy, accountability and decolonial perspectives
- Digital colonialism, platforms, and infrastructures
- Artificial intelligence, data, and the politics of knowledge
- Communication, media, culture, and representation
- Digital labour, inequality, governance, and resistance
- Research methods, epistemic justice, and situated knowledge
We welcome theoretical, empirical, methodological, and critical contributions. Authors should explain their intervention clearly and engage responsibly with the people, communities, and contexts discussed.
Why editorial assessment rather than external peer review?
DDSS has deliberately developed without an external peer-review process. We value scholarly criticism as advice that helps ideas develop. Our concern is that peer review can turn this advisory role into a gatekeeping mechanism: definitive accept-or-reject judgments may offer little constructive dialogue and privilege familiar theories, methods, institutional positions, and conventions of what counts as knowledge.
A decolonial journal must make room to question those conventions and develop alternatives to established knowledge paradigms. We therefore choose editorial assessment as an experiment in accountable, plural knowledge-making. This does not mean that every peer review is unhelpful, or that editorial judgment is free from power or bias. Editors must remain open to challenge and avoid reproducing the exclusions this approach seeks to address.
Submissions are assessed for relevance, originality, clarity of argument, appropriate evidence and methods, ethical transparency, and contribution. Editors may request revisions, decline, or accept work; acceptance is not automatic. Constructive criticism remains central, and published claims remain open to scholarly debate and correction. Published work must not be described as externally peer-reviewed.
Publication model and fees
Submissions are welcome throughout the year. Accepted work is prepared for continuous publication. Reading, submitting, and publishing are free of charge: DDSS charges no submission or article processing fees.
Open access and copyright
Authors retain copyright. Articles are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Sharing and adaptation, including commercial use, are permitted with appropriate attribution, a license link, and an indication of changes.
Research and publication ethics
Authors must submit original work, cite sources accurately, obtain necessary permissions, and disclose funding and conflicts of interest. Research involving people must describe relevant consent, confidentiality, and ethics approval or explain why approval was not required. Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and undisclosed duplicate publication are unacceptable.
Concerns, corrections, or appeals may be sent to the principal contact. Please identify the work and provide supporting information. Editors will assess concerns and, when warranted, seek clarification and issue a correction, expression of concern, or retraction. Appeals should explain the grounds for reconsideration; acceptance is not guaranteed.
AI: openness, ethical use, and human responsibility
DDSS permits transparent, critically supervised use of AI. We do not adopt a blanket ban or a technologically pessimistic position. AI tools are already part of many research and writing practices. Excluding a technology simply because it is new or widely contested would overlook possible uses in translation, language accessibility, coding, exploration, and scholarly communication. Widespread use is a reason to establish clear responsibilities, not proof that every use is ethical.
Our openness is critical: authors should consider bias, unequal access, data extraction, labour, environmental costs, and the concentration of technological power. Using AI does not remove the need for situated knowledge, independent judgment, or engagement with the people and contexts studied.
- Be transparent: disclose substantive AI assistance, naming the tool, its purpose, and the parts of the work affected. Explain AI-assisted analytical procedures sufficiently for readers to assess them.
- Do not pass off generated output as your own original intellectual contribution: do not submit unexamined AI-generated text, arguments, images, code, or analysis under a misleading claim of human authorship. Clearly identify substantive generated material and explain your own contribution and critical verification. A disclosure alone does not establish scholarly merit.
- Verify and take responsibility: check claims, quotations, references, code, and results against reliable sources or appropriate tests. Never fabricate sources, evidence, participants, or findings. AI cannot be an author; human authors remain accountable for the entire submission.
- Respect people and rights: protect confidential and identifiable information, obtain necessary permissions, and respect copyright. Do not upload protected research material to AI services without appropriate authorization.
Submissions are assessed on their scholarly contribution, transparency, and ethical practice. AI assistance itself is not grounds for rejection; concealed generation, misrepresentation, unreliable claims, and unethical use may require revision or rejection.
The DDSSN community
DDSS is developed within the Decolonial Digital Social Sciences Network (DDSSN), a free, voluntary and non-hierarchical community connecting researchers, students and practitioners interested in decolonial and critical approaches across the social sciences and humanities.
The network offers a space to exchange ideas and resources, build scholarly connections and explore collaborative work across disciplines, languages and regions. Participation is open to people at all career stages.
Contact
Principal contact: Özgür Yılmaz
ozguryilmaz955@gmail.com
