Publishing its first issue in 1989, Humaniora has maintained a long tradition of contributing to scholarship on the humanities of Indonesia. Intending to increase awareness of Indonesian humanities, signified precisely by the name Humaniora, this journal acknowledges the patent diversity and extent of Indonesian humanities, and their elements, and seeks to encourage work on this infinite range of facets within human diversity. The journal notes that the Humanities is both one significant part of the overall Human Science spectrum, and concomitantly forever shifting, evolving, and merging with other fields, where the humanities is constantly evolving to accommodate a modern Indonesia.

As such, Humaniora calls for work in the humanities, as it pertains to the study of Indonesian culture, and at times, the comparative study of Indonesia with other regions. These studies, and observances, in the form of a concise journal paper, shall develop critical understandings of Indonesia, pertinent to its progressive and concurrently richly diverse humanities.

The emphasis of the journal is manifold: it includes the garnering, analysis, and dissemination of information pertaining to Indonesian humanities, the accurate and thick description of observed and lived humanities of Indonesia, the increase in quality of critique of Indonesian humanities, the strengthening of critical approaches to Indonesian humanities, the forging of interdisciplinary work, and hence new fields of scholarship, within the Indonesian humanities, and the encouraging of innovative methodologies, and evolving permutations of these methodologies, for the investigation of the humanities pertinent to Indonesia.

A timeline of Humaniora, its accreditation, policy changes, and publication improvements  can be found below.

1989. Humaniora was established.

2006. Humaniora was accredited by the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education of the Republic of Indonesia.

2009. Humaniora was accredited by the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education of the Republic of Indonesia.

2012. Humaniora was accredited by the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education of the Republic of Indonesia.

2013. Humaniora was included in the DOAJ indexing and later by days, Humaniora got the "Green Tick" mark of the DOAJ.

2015. Each article in Humaniora was henceforth given a unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI).

2016. Humaniora started to fully published in English only. From this point on, authors’ details also include their email address, and starting with the June issue (the Vol. 28. No. 2), article titles are in title case.

2017. Humaniora was accredited by the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education of the Republic of Indonesia; this accreditation is valid until 2023.

2018. Humaniora was indexed by Asean Citation Index (ACI) until the present.

2018. Humaniora was indexed in Sinta (Science and Technology Index), with a score of S2.

2020. In order to emphasize the journal’s place in Indonesian cultural studies, Humaniora tightened its focus and scope, reducing the variety of accepted articles to those focused on Indonesian or Indonesia-related culture.