Open-Access Publishing and the Transformation of the American Archivist

Abstract

In the process of transforming the American Archivist (AA) into a digital journal, the Society of American Archivists (SAA) confronted the political, economic, and intellectual tensions inherent in the complex environment of open-access publishing. This article establishes the framework within which SAA made the transition from print only to a combination of print and electronic publication and contextualizes this transformation within the intellectual evolution of the longest-running archival journal in the world. It uses this transformation to a print-digital hybrid as a jumping-off point for consideration of future possibilities for the Society’s digital publishing endeavors and concludes by considering a set of unresolved issues for the American Archivist posed by the open-access publishing movement, which itself is coming to terms with broad-based economic and preservation challenges.