Aims and scope

The purpose of Complexity is to report important advances in the scientific study of complex systems. Complex systems are characterized by interactions between their components that produce new information — present in neither the initial nor boundary conditions — which limit their predictability. Given the amount of information processing required to study complexity, the use of computers has been central to complex systems research.

This Open Access journal publishes high-quality original research, as well as rigorous review articles, across a broad range of disciplines. Studies can have a theoretical, methodological, or practical focus. However, submissions must always provide a significant contribution to complex systems.

Concepts relevant to Complexity include:

        Adaptability, robustness, and resilience
        Complex networks
        Criticality
        Evolution and emergent behaviour
        Nonlinear dynamics
        Pattern formation
        Self-organization

Methods used within the scientific study of complex systems frequently include:

        Agent-based modelling
        Analytical methods
        Cellular automata
        Computational methods
        Data science
        Game theory
        Machine learning
        Statistical mechanics

Applications of complex systems may be related to the following disciplines, among others:

        Computational social science
        Digital epidemiology
        Ecology
        Economics
        Engineering
        Socio-technical systems
        Statistical linguistics
        Systems biology
        Urban systems

Work that considers the above methods or applications, but which is not applied to the study of complex systems will be considered out of scope. For the avoidance of doubt, ‘complex’ in the context of this journal should not be considered merely as a synonym for difficult or complicated.

Special Issue on Social Human Complexity and Global Challenges: Theoretical, Methodological, and Empirical Contributions for Transformative Change
Día de Entrega: 2026-01-23

Description

With the increasing rate at which global challenges (e.g., climate change, biodiversity, water scarcity, poverty, inequality, health, human rights, migrations, food security) are expanding and growing in severity, there is an added urgency to organize collective actions and responses capable of tackling them while creating conditions for better futures. Those responses need to target the processes at the core of the complexity of these challenges along with those capable of driving positive changes, creative adaptations and resilient outcomes. Human actions are driving catastrophic changes, but they can also support transformative changes. Understanding social complexity is paramount and several key questions need to be addressed. How can we mobilize human capacities to bring forth better and more flourishing futures? How can human coordination dynamics be managed towards transformative effects? How can collective action and practices be organized to lead to surprising and emerging novel outcomes that can inspire generations? How to open spaces for emergent possibilities building upon the complexity of human bonds to sustain transformative environments that bring out the best of individuals and of a diversity of social collective entities? How can bottom-up, local and community-based actions drive global transformations? How to navigate the process of change as emergent possibilities gain shape and how to best steer the processes of human change? What can indigenous knowledge and traditional knowledge reveal about social-ecological complexity and how can they shape complexity methods and practices in complexity-informed practices to global challenges? These questions can contribute to enrich or develop new complex systems informed approaches that expand possibilities for research, practice, and policy-making. There are ethical frameworks and implications that also need to be reflected upon and that can shape our methodologies and methods to research social human complexity and global challenges.

Developing a deeper, more nuanced, and integrated understanding of global challenges has become crucial, emphasizing the unique role of human social dynamics and the interconnected processes occurring within and between social and social-ecological systems. This requires the interaction and assemblage of a variety of knowledge and modes of knowing that need to be complex enough to match the complexity of the problems at hand. Theory, research and practice are, hence, also challenged to develop richer and more creative connections. Science is invited to strengthen the dialogue with philosophy, as its critical reflexive partner, and increase the complexity of its own organization and its modes of thinking by engaging in creative and collaborative interactions with non-academic epistemic traditions for the assemblage of transformative systems capable of more fully working with the complexity of the human in the context of global challenges.

This Special Issue calls upon contributions for researching and understanding the role of social human processes and dynamics in the context of global challenges and to building more complexity aware knowledge to guide actions towards transformative social and social-ecological changes. It especially welcomes deeply interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches fostering meaningful creative exchanges between theory, research and practice, e.g., policy-making, and social interventions. It also welcomes contributions that bridge and integrate, from a complex systems perspective, academic and other than academic knowledge. Special value is placed on multidimensional, complex research designs and methodologies, particularly qualitative and mixed-methods approaches. It encourages philosophical, theoretical as well as methodological contributions for researching and intervening in human complexity in complex ways. A variety of topics, focused on different kinds of systems and contexts (e.g., families, schools, communities, governments, food systems, business, policies, public services) are welcomed to the extent that they explicitly address social human processes in relation to complex challenges from a complexity-informed perspective. Integrative and ecological approaches that cover or have applicability in multiple domains (e.g., family, health, education, work, justice) are especially valued as well as contributions that target community-based social and social-ecological systems and transformative change processes.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

    Complexity and social change processes
    Complexity, ethics and global challenges
    Transformative human coordination dynamics
    Dynamics and emergence in human social and social ecological systems
    Organizational complexity
    Human drivers and activators of positive change
    Participatory community-based processes and dynamics
    Indigenous and traditional knowledge and complexity
    Complex modes of thinking and acting in complexity
    Transformative processes and emergence in human relations
    Complexity and relational worldviews
    Second-order approaches to researching social complexity
    Complexity and policy-making for complex problems
    Qualitative and mixed methods approach for social human complexity