Transactions is the academic journal of the Royal Historical Society, and — as a generalist journal — publishes historical content across a wide range of subjects, chronologies and regions, worldwide.
In addition to articles setting out new research, Transactions includes a popular Common Room section. Here, in shorter comment essays, historians consider topics such as the practice of historical research, teaching and communicating history, current debates on historical themes, the historical profession, and history outside education.
Transactions publishes content from historians at all career stages, from those working with history within and beyond higher education, and from historians worldwide.
The journal’s editors and editorial board warmly welcome the submission of research articles and commentaries for review. All articles accepted for publication appear Gold OA with no charge to an author. All new content is widely promoted to the Society’s 7000+ Fellows and Members and via social media.
The editors offer a supportive and swift review of submitted content. Current average timescales from submission to publication are:
- c. 2 months from submission to first decision
- c. 4 months from submission to final decision
- c. 6 months from submission to online publication on the FirstView platform of the journal’s publisher, Cambridge University Press
Recent research articles now available on FirstView, include:
- Public Opinion and Governance: State formation in Savoy Following the French Annexation (1860–1861), by Marie-Cecile Thoral
- The ‘Refugee World’: A Twentieth-Century Retrospective, by Peter Gatrell
- Remembering Rebellion in the Tudor South West, by Mark Stoyle
- Possible Maps: Newfoundland, 1763–1829, by Julia Laite
- Counting the Stakes: A Reassessment of Vlad III Dracula’s Practice of Collective Impalements in Fifteenth-Century South-eastern Europe, by Dénes Harai
- ‘your poore distressed suppliant’: ‘Madness’, Emotion and the Archive in Early Modern England, by Jonathan Willis
Recent comment pieces, now available online as part of the Common Room section of the journal, include:
- Apprentice to the Trade: Reflections on the Craft of Writing History, by Robert Colls
- Rethinking Engagement: Insights from UK History Departments, by Sarah Jones and Simon Peplow
- Bede or Beowulf? Reflecting on the Constructed Narratives of Teaching Medieval History in Schools in England, by Toby Purser
- Show Me the Data: New Practices for Historical Sources, by Ruth Ahnert, Katherine McDonough and Daniel C. S. Wilson
- Writing the History of Neoliberalism: A Comment, by Quinn Slobodian, Priya Lal, Gary Gerstle and Tehila Sasson
- The Historian in the Age of AI, by Chris Campbell
Further information on submitting an article to Transactions is available here. Questions to the Editors may be sent to: [email protected].