2025-2030 Strategic Framework
See our progress in other areas here.
Transform
Catalyze change in academic practice and culture that strengthens the place and resonance of the humanities and social sciences
1. Convene communities around proven practices and approaches toward a “new academy” that rewards scholars and administrators seeking to grow our fields and create a healthy environment for inquiry using the full range of methods of circulating knowledge
- ACLS continued to support and gather groups of scholars pursuing professional routes beyond the academy:
- In summer 2025, we also hosted a Collaboratory on Data Storytelling as part of the Intention Foundry‘s “Beyond Precarity: Incubators for Secure Futures” series, which offers semester-long engagements designed to confront and transform the intellectual, social, and financial challenges that early career scholars face in today’s academy.
“The Intention Foundry retreat demonstrated how data storytelling can clarify urgent problems and prepare scholars to engage broader publics… It was a clear example of what becomes possible when equity-focused pedagogy meets the tools of data analysis.”
Kenton Rambsey
Professor of African American Literature and Data storytelling & Visualization Specialist at the Center for Applied Data Science and Analytics
2. Collaborate with those who publish and otherwise disseminate scholarship to ensure its reach to broad audiences
- ACLS advised JSTOR on its Path to Open initiative and hosted its second annual Open Access competition for both researchers and publishers:
Path to Open
ACLS has stewarded the Path to Open Community Advisory Committee to support the initiative’s longevity, effectiveness, and sustainability, helping to provide feedback, recommendations, and insight as well as outreach and community-building support for the pilot. In January 2026, the first 100 books in the Path to Open collection flipped to open!
Open Access Book Prizes
In October 2025, ACLS hosted a public panel and award ceremony honoring the 2025 ACLS Open Access Book Prize and Arcadia Open Access Publishing Award winners at The New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. These prizes recognize and reward scholars and publishers of exceptional, innovative, and open access humanities scholarship.
3. Advance doctoral education reform that better serves students, academia, and society
Doctoral Futures
ACLS has partnered with three of its member societies—the American Historical Association, the Modern Language Association, and the Society of Biblical Literature—for the Doctoral Futures Initiative, a three-year initiative reimagining humanities PhD programs to better educate the next generation of scholars and prepare them for both academic and non-academic careers. In the first phase of Doctoral Futures, currently underway, each member society is spearheading a committee to study a different part of the graduate education lifecycle: Preparation & Inclusion, Graduate Programs, and Post-Degree Pathways. They are collaborating with Dr. Katina Rogers, Doctoral Futures research consultant, to conduct focus groups to understand the current state of graduate education, identify areas in need of structural change, and survey the landscape of attempted reforms.
4. Identify and promote institutional policies and culture that foster growth in the academic humanities and social sciences
- ACLS published three resources that lift up strategies for a more vibrant academy: a report on the promise of the humanities at community colleges, the latest edition of Building Blocks for a New Academy, and new Innovation in Action case studies.
ACLS Strategic Framework 2025-2030
Download