About This Journal
About Human-Machine Communication (HMC)
Mission & Aims
Human-Machine Communication (HMC) is an international, interdisciplinary hub for peer-reviewed scholarship on communication in and around sociotechnical systems. We welcome work that advances HMC from a variety of methodological, theoretical, and critical perspectives to bring visibility and community to this emergent area of research and practice.
The journal grew out of sustained community organizing around pre-conferences and workshops at the International Communication Association (ICA), the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), and the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), reflecting the growing scholarly energy converging on this topic.
HMC publishes research on communication with and about digital interlocutors, including artificial conversation entities and other AI systems, embodied machine communicators (robots), and technologically augmented persons (cyborgs), as well as communication in machine spaces (such as virtual and augmented realities) and human–machine configurations. We also welcome scholarship that examines how the human–machine relationship is constructed through discourse and interaction.
Research articles, reviews, conceptual pieces, and case analyses that advance the interdisciplinary study of HMC.
Scholars, practitioners, and policymakers in communication, information, HCI, STS, media studies, and related fields.
Open Access Policy
HMC provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
HMC does not charge any fees to authors, whether for submission or publication of manuscripts.
As an open access journal, all content in Human-Machine Communication is freely available without charge to users or institutions. Readers may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose allowed by the license, without requesting prior permission from the publisher or the author. This policy follows the BOAI definition of open access .
All articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) .
Publication Frequency
Starting in 2026, Human-Machine Communication will increase its publication frequency, moving from two issues per year to three issues per year (January, June, and October).
Publisher & Partners
Publisher: HMC is published by the Communication and Social Robotics Labs (ComBotLabs).
Collaborating Institutions: ComBotLabs works in collaboration with the School of Communication at Western Michigan University and the Nicholson School of Communication and Media at the University of Central Florida.
Editorial & Peer-Review Standards
HMC follows a double-anonymized peer review process, normally obtaining at least two independent reviews for research articles, reviews, and case manuscripts. Reviewers are drawn from the Editorial Board or from qualified subject-matter experts. Editorial decisions are made by the Editor-in-Chief (or designate, Special Issue Editor, or Associate Editor). The journal adheres to recognized frameworks including the COPE Core Practices and the ICMJE Recommendations.
See the Editorial Board for our international and interdisciplinary leadership. For detailed policies (authorship/CRediT, conflicts/funding, data availability, use of AI tools, appeals/complaints, and corrections/retractions), visit our Publication Ethics page.
Indexing & Abstracting
HMC is indexed in Scopus, ProQuest, EBSCO, Google Scholar, Informit, and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
Access, Rights & Preservation
HMC is a fully open-access journal hosted on the UCF STARS platform. Readers may access published content without subscription barriers. Authors retain rights under the journal’s licensing terms. For open access, licensing, and preservation details, see our Policies page.
HMC supports the principles of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI). Content is preserved through the hosting platform’s repository infrastructure and long-term web archiving arrangements.
Contact
Editorial office: Editor-in-Chief
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