Acknowledging Clio's lesser children: The importance of Journals for Historical Research and Scholarship

Journal of Scholarly Publishing

Volumn 39, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 241-256

  Hérubel, Jean Pierre V M ^a,b  

^a Department of Library Science ^*

^b PURDUE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Article; History; Journals; Monographs

Indexed keywords

EID: 42949136586     PISSN: 11989742     EISSN: 17101166     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3138/jsp.39.3.241     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. Consult, e.g., The Bowker Annual of Library and Book Trade Information (New York: R.R. Bowker 2007); Choice is the monthly publication of the Association of College and Research libraries, a division of the American Library Association.
2. See Thomas Bender, The Education of Historians for the Twentieth-First Century (Urbana: American Historical Association/ University of Illinois Press 2004).
3. Readers may consult this database at the AHA's Web site, http://www.historians.org/pubs/free/journals/. The database is continually evolving, as new tides can be suggested as they arise.
4. See Ulrich's Periodical Directory, http://www.utrichsweb.com/ ulrichsweb/.
5. See Jennifer Wolfe Thompson, 'The Death of the Scholarly Monograph in the Humanities? Citation Patterns in Literary Scholarship,' Libri 52, 3 (September 2002): 121-36.
6. There is a small corpus of materials on the 'monograph crisis'; for some representative discussions, see Robert Darnton, 'The New Age of the Book,' New York Review of Books (18 March 1999), available at http://www.nybooks.com/articies/546;
7. Lindsey Waters, 'The Tyranny of the Monograph and the Plight of the Publisher,' Publishing Research Quarterly 17, 3 (September 2001): 19-25.
8. Most pertinent to historians and the monograph is Robert B. Townsend, 'History and the Future of Scholarly Publishing: Field Does Better Than Most at Getting Books Published, But Problems Loom,' Perspectives (October 2003): 32-7, 41, available at http://www.historians.org/ Perspectives/Issues/2003/0310/rbtwebarticle1003.pdf.
9. See Modern Language Association, Report of the MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion (December 2006), http://www.mla.org/pdf/task_force_tenure_promo.pdf.
10. A very strong example of the article (or review article) versus monograph debate is the Annaliste approach to history. Lucien Febvre, a founder of the Annales School, published his most innovative reflections and historiographic innovations in periodical venues, so that his most important work was disseminated via his reviews of other scholars' work in the pages of the journal Annales.
11. See Bertrand Müller, Lucien Febvre, lecteur et critique (Paris: Albin Michel 2003);
12. Stuart Clark, ed., The Annales School (London: Routledge 1999);
13. Jean-Pierre V.M. Hérubel, Annales Historiography and Theory. A Selective and Annotated Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 1994).
14. See Margaret F. Stieg, The Origin and Development of Scholarly Historical Periodicals (University: University of Alabama Press 1986).
15. See Jean-Pierre V.M. Hérubel, 'Tradition and Protean Nature. - Journals and Scholarly Communication: A Review Essay,' Libraries and Culture 41, 2 (2006): 233-57.
16. See Jean-Pierre V.M. Hérubel and Anne L. Buchanan, 'Disciplinary, Interdisciplinary, and Subdisciplinary Linkages in Historical Studies Journals,' Science and Science of Science 3 (1994): 15-24.
17. A critical phenomenon is the development of conferences, which may result in proceedings that may later yield articles', book chapters, and, eventually, monographs. Sometimes new official societies arise and official organs are founded.
18. See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1970).
19. In library history, much of the scholarship on the history of libraries in the United States appears in periodical form, while monograph-length works are less well represented. Libraries and the Cultural Record (formerly Libraries and Culture), currently publishing its forty-second volume, remains the primary publication venue for scholarship in library history. Another fruitful example is Book History which publishes critical studies in print, reading, and publishing cultures. Book History is the official organ of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP), which is devoted to the study of all historical aspects of print, media, and publishing culture. Although venues exist for publishing library and book history, the dominance of the periodical research literature provides wider distribution within these discrete specializations.
20. For general works, consult Arne Hessenbruch, ed., Reader's Guide to the History of Science (London: Fitzroy Dearborn 2000),
21. and J.L. Heilbron, ed., The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003);
22. for the nature of publication trends, see Jean-Pierre V.M., Hérubel, "Clio's View of the History of Science: A Preliminary Bibliometric Appreciation," Behavioral and Social Sciences Librarian 24, 2 (2006): 69-91.