Although most history essays rely on primary documents, it is important to supplement and strengthen these essays with perspectives from other academics. These can be helpful to see who interpretations of documents have changed over time, help build your own argument, or pivot off of and form your own rebuttal to. When accessing library sources looking for these articles, it is best to know what are some of the most prestigious journals so you can be assured that your information is reputable and relevant.
These are some of the biggest, and the most helpful to students, journals in the history field:
This is a more technical journal based on new methodologies and data. Articles in the journal may explore new sources of data or look at old ones with newly developed statistical or computational analyses.
Past & Present covers a wide range of social historical topics from changing government regimes to ecological history to feminist lenses of past events. The journal uniquely encourages exciting and rousing topics.
A great journal for those going into cultural history or conservation, the journal focuses on the maintenance, change, and protection of cultural heritage. The journal aims to highlight innovative methods to physical conservation.
Using a global perspective, this journal looks at the ripples of historical phenomena at multiple scales and how these events are related and interconnected. All journal articles in the Journal of Global History must take on a research scope that goes beyond just a regional or cultural scale to look at the global impacts of events like colonization, class, migration, and more.
A journal with one of the highest impact scores in the discipline, this journal covers everything economic from a historical perspective. The issues cover topics like economic growth, economic inequality, the po,itial economy and more. This is a great journal for history students looking to move into a business, marketing, economic, and finance field.
The Historical Journal has a mainly eurocentric focus, but looks at post-1500s phenomena all over the world. The journal is unique in that it contains many historiographical reviews of recent literature and also intends to highlight young authors and searchers.
As the journal name implies, History and Theory takes a philosophical and critical approach to the nature and methods of the historical discipline. In addition to philosophy, the journal also looks at ethics and biases.