If you’ve been reading this blog for quite some time, you may remember that back in September 2016, I put together a guide to peer-reviewed Canadian history scholarly journals.My goal in creating this guide was to respond to frequent student questions about how to determine whether a source they were using for their paper was in fact peer-reviewed. Several students have specifically requested a list of journals that frequently published Canadian history material as a useful tool.
Creating additional guides for other areas has been at the back of my mind ever since. I even got a request for one on medical history that I totally intend to get to one of these days. But as is so often the case, other issues took precedence, and before I knew it, it was June 2019. I had been throwing around the idea of creating a guide for journals covering North American history before 1800-1850. But as anyone who specializes in this area knows, trying to define the parameters of such a list is a potential nightmare. When I was discussing this with Keith Grant, Stephanie Pettigrew, and Daniel Samson, Stephanie raised the idea of a crowdsourced a list. Basically, we would provide the spreadsheet, and would encourage folks to help fill it in however they would like. And so, a new project was born! And don’t worry, we will be coming out with the guide soon, along with a lengthy discussion about why it’s so hard to define.