Shaw, STudor, K2025-04-162025-04-162024-01-18Ethics and Social Welfare, ISSN: 1749-6535 (Print); 1749-6543 (Online), Informa UK Limited, 18(3), 246-263. doi: 10.1080/17496535.2023.22999801749-65351749-6543http://hdl.handle.net/10292/19098Human stories lie at the heart of professional practice in the human, social services, though these are often discounted when it comes to researching such services and sharing practice through publication. This article identifies and addresses certain methodological and epistemological biases and consequent challenges in human science research, and discusses the importance of story (autoethnography) and discovery (heuristics) in research which can inform practice, meaningfully and ethically. It considers this by addressing both research and publication, illustrating both the challenges and the solutions from the authors’ own experiences. The article argues for reclaiming the subjective and the subjectivist dimension in human, social science, and, therefore, the experiential, in both research and publication; and addresses four problems with regard to publishing in the human sciences, namely: privilege, quality, anonymity in peer-review, and capital.© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consenthttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/44 Human Society50 Philosophy and Religious Studies5001 Applied Ethics4407 Policy and Administration4409 Social WorkClinical Research1607 Social Work2201 Applied Ethics4407 Policy and administration4409 Social work5001 Applied ethicsJournal ArticleOpenAccess10.1080/17496535.2023.2299980