James Grossman, Executive Director, American Historical Association (AHA) attended this virtual meeting.
AHA allows an author to retain copyright, granting one-time use of the article in the journal, with other rights for reuse in any work the author may later publish being retained by the author. The author is also allowed to post the manuscript as submitted (before peer review or copyediting) on the author’s own website or IR, to post the accepted article (after peer review, but before copyediting or typesetting) on non-commercial sites after a 24-month embargo period, and to distribute the toll-free link to the final published version of record, as long as it is not posted on a third-party or commercial website.
An important concern for his discipline is how to encourage scholars to publish more accessible, interpretative pieces in a variety of outlets such as blog posts and newspapers, rather than just academic articles; robust peer reviews could be required for the tenure process. James added that "one size fits all" journal publication is not recommended for all disciplines. For example, STEM authors need to publish results quickly; publication for historians is a much more collaborative and labor-intensive process, because of both developmental editing and quality of the prose.