The American Historical Association (AHA) is the largest membership association of historians in the world, with more than 10,000 members. Founded in 1884 and incorporated by Congress in 1889 for the promotion of historical studies, the AHA is headquartered in Washington, DC. Unlike commercial publishers with thousands of titles, the AHA publishes just two periodicals - but one of them, the American Historical Review (AHR), has been the journal of record for the historical discipline in the United States since 1895. The AHR is published by Oxford University Press (OUP) on the AHA's behalf, which means submission mechanics, open-access options, and fees follow OUP's systems while editorial control stays with the AHA.

This guide covers what the AHA publishes, how the AHR's editorial process works, what open access costs (and when it costs nothing), and how to prepare a Chicago-style manuscript for submission.

• American Historical Review (AHR) - the flagship quarterly journal, published since 1895 and distributed by Oxford University Press. It publishes research articles, historiographical essays, digital and experimental scholarship through the AHR History Lab, and several hundred book reviews per year across every field of history. It is the most generalist of the major history journals: articles must matter to historians outside the author's own subfield.
• Perspectives on History - the AHA's newsmagazine, published since 1962. It carries news of the discipline, teaching columns, professional and career advice, and commentary. Perspectives is edited rather than peer-reviewed, and there is no fee to write for it.
• The AHA also produces booklets, directories, and the History in Focus podcast, but the AHR is the only peer-reviewed research venue.

Publishing a standard article in the AHR costs nothing: it is a subscription journal, and there are no submission or page charges. Open access is optional and follows Oxford University Press's hybrid model.

The AHR is known for one of the most thorough review processes in the humanities:

• Double-anonymized review - authors and reviewers are anonymous to each other, so manuscripts must be prepared without self-identifying references.
• Multiple specialist readers - because AHR articles must work for a cross-field readership, submissions are typically read by the editors and several external specialists.
• Turnaround - expect a first decision to take several months; in-depth humanities review is slower than STM norms. Submissions must be exclusive to the AHR while under review.
• Selectivity - the AHR accepts only a small fraction of submissions; strong articles are often those that connect a specific archive or case to questions historians in other fields care about.

1. Read the guidelines. The AHA hosts the AHR's submission guidelines at historians.org, covering article submissions, History Lab projects, digital media, and letters.
2. Prepare the manuscript in Chicago style. The AHR uses Chicago notes-bibliography formatting - footnotes rather than author-date citations. SciSpace's AHA/Chicago templates handle this formatting automatically.
3. Anonymize the file. Remove your name, acknowledgments, and self-identifying citations to support double-anonymized review.
4. Submit via ScholarOne. The AHR uses ScholarOne Manuscripts (Manuscript Central) at mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ahrev.
5. Wait out the review. Do not submit the manuscript elsewhere while it is under consideration.

For Perspectives on History, pitch the editors directly through historians.org rather than using ScholarOne.

The AHR - like most history journals - requires the Chicago Manual of Style's notes-bibliography system: numbered footnotes with full bibliographic details on first citation and shortened forms thereafter. Quotations, archival citations, and non-English sources all have specific Chicago conventions, so budget real time for formatting or use a template with Chicago (notes-bibliography) built in.

The AHA maintains its own Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct, one of the discipline's foundational ethics documents, covering plagiarism, misuse of evidence, and professional behavior. Because the AHR is published by Oxford University Press, articles also fall under OUP's publication-ethics framework, which is aligned with COPE guidance on corrections and retractions.