#AHAGate: In Retrospect | The Infornado

"On July 22nd, a Monday, the American Historical Association (AHA) posted a short statement on their blog about early career historians’ dissertations being available to read online. As of Sunday, August 4th, that post has 121 comments, numerous response blog posts from faculty, graduate students and more, a Twitter hashtag (#AHAGate), and an article in the New York Times. The professional association, in the crux of the statement, calls for universities to adopt policies that allow PhD history students to embargo their dissertation research for up to six years, in which time they would be able to revise the manuscript and hopefully produce a scholarly book. This statement comes at a time when many academics, including professional associations, are working toward a more open scholarly culture, sharing research broadly and openly on the internet. The AHA, in their embargo recommendation and in a similar statement released last year, are essentially opposed to such movements, arguing that “open access” is not a feasible research strategy for a discipline like history that relies so heavily on books and academic monographs. This collection is meant to serve as a snapshot of the issues at hand; Is open access a possible/probable future of scholarly publishing? What role does the dissertation play in this space? How much control should scholars exercise over their research, especially at public universities? Which pieces of the current system of scholarly production are essential, and which need to adapt? The essays included herein are framed by the AHA’s statement on dissertation embargoes, but hint at these greater topics of the role of the academy in a globally, technologically-connected world. The American Historical Association is right. The premise of their PRECHD (Policies Regarding the Embargoes of Completed History Dissertations) statement is sound; we must allow, nay, insist, that emerging scholars have control their scholarly products. Many of the graduate student responses follow this line of thought, including especially Adam Crymbal’s impassioned Students Should be Empowered, Not Bullied into Open Access. Developing sensibilities about how scholarship exists in a digital culture is foundational to the future of the academy. And kudos to AHA for stepping so boldly into the empty space and declaring loudly that they are invested in the system and haven’t forgotten those coming up after them. If newly minted PhD’s were released onto the job market with a firm grasp on the intricacies (and commercial interests) of scholarly publishing, we’d start to see the shifts that will ensure relevance of the scholarly venture to an interconnected world. The publishing world is of two minds in terms of the scholar’s control over scholarship ..."