As part of becoming a historian, I’m trying to keep up with the most important historical journals. Subscribing to each of those journals is prohibitively expensive even at rates for graduate students, and I don’t need copies of the journals to keep. Going to the library and browsing the shelves in periodicals would be my preferred method, but it’s difficult to know when new issues are published for all the journals, and I don’t often have time for extended reading that is not class-related. So, I’ve started using RSS feeds from online academic databases.

Both EBSCO and Gale allow users to subscribe to RSS feeds for journals. Gale’s feature is far superior to EBSCO’s, because EBSCO’s feeds expire after two months of inactivity. My RSS reader lets me know when a journal has published a new issue and, in most cases, links to the full-text.

The main journals that I’m keeping up with are these:

  • American Historical Review
  • Church History
  • Journal of American History
  • Journal of the Early Republic
  • New England Quarterly
  • William and Mary Quarterly

I’m also watching these journals:

  • Early American Literature
  • History and Theory
  • History: Review of New Books
  • Journal of Social History
  • Western Historical Quarterly

If anyone has a better solution, I’d like to hear about it.