Respons magazine - review journal for the humanities and social sciences

The journal Respons is aimed at academics and interested members of the public who want to keep abreast of informed debate in the humanities and social sciences. It has a circulation of 1800, geographically concentrated in the university cities. Respons provides readers with orientation, not least in the publications of small publishers, and gives Swedish academics an opportunity to communicate with other disciplines and a wider readership. The journal is also a forum for cultural debate and discussion of research issues in the humanities and social sciences. Response thus takes place at an intersection where several needs are met. The review activities of daily newspapers have deteriorated dramatically in recent years. Either non-fiction is not reviewed at all, or it is written briefly, often by someone without in-depth knowledge. It is becoming increasingly difficult for the general quality-oriented audience to find their way around and increasingly difficult for small quality-oriented publishers to find readers. The academic world, for its part, risks losing contact with the national audience and with other disciplines, partly because it lacks platforms in the Swedish public sphere and partly because the focus is now on publishing in English in specialist journals. The journal thus also plays an important role in protecting the Swedish language against English in the humanities and social sciences.