Session Abstract

Journals have traditionally been distinguished by their role in the peer review process—either by vetting new scholarly work at an early stage, or offering a critical assessment after such work has been published in book form. But digital technologies call the traditional role of scholarly journals into question. The economics of scholarly publishing has grown increasingly tenuous, as the costs of science, technology, and medical journals place a crushing weight on the budgets of academic libraries, which are in turn cutting back on subscriptions to history journals. At the same time, new forms of online peer review—various designates as “open peer review” and “post-publication peer review”—offer new methods for the assessment of scholarly work. This session will explore the challenges and opportunities for history journals going forward, and assess where we as a profession might go from here.