We’d like to propose a general discussion session on the present and future of electronic publishing in the historical profession.

We have all been involved in the creation of a new professional organization, the Society for U.S. Intellectual History, which came into being during the summer of 2011.  (We’re so new that we do not even have a website yet, though you can find out about us on the U.S. Intellectual History blog, which is affiliated with S-USIH.)  S-USIH’s two major, existing projects are our blog and our conference, both of which predate the existence of the Society. But one of the reasons that we wanted to form a society is that we are interesting in exploring the possibility of creating some sort of journal. I think we all feel that this will likely be an electronic journal. But this immediately raises a series of questions that we have only begun to explore.

What forms might an e-journal take?  Does an e-journal differ simply in its method of distribution? Or does its electronic format potentially allow us to promote and distribute different forms of scholarship from those that might appear in a printed journal? How does an e-journal credential itself in our discipline?  How have other e-journals answered these questions?

Or is the very idea of an e-journal—an electronic version of a form created in a print-bound world—a failure to explore the horizons of electronic publishing and digital scholarship?  Should the publication program of a new professional society in 2012 take an entirely different form?

In this session, we’d hope to gather those interested in exploring these questions in a more general context.  Among the general questions we’re particularly interested in exploring: What are the new scholarly possibilities opened up by electronic publication?  What are the expenses—in hardware, software, bandwith, etc.—associated with a serious e-publication program? How can some vital technologies associated with traditional scholarly publication—e.g. peer review—be translated to an electronic age?

Ben Alpers,
Lauren Kientz Anderson,
Ray Haberski,
Andrew Hartman,
Tim Lacy,