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Statement on Standards of
Professional Conduct
Approved by Professional Division, December 9, 2004 and
adopted by Council, January 6, 2005.
(Wholly revised from an earlier statement adopted May 1987;
amended May 1990, May 1995, June 1996, January and May 1999,
May 2000, June 2001, and January 2003.)
This
Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct addresses dilemmas and
concerns about the practice of history that historians have regularly brought
to the American Historical Association seeking guidance and counsel. Some of
the most important sections of this Statement address questions about
employment that vary according to the different institutional settings in which
historians perform their work. Others address forms of professional misconduct
that are especially troubling to historians. And some seek to identify a core
set of shared values that professional historians strive to honor in the course
of their work.
1.
The Profession of History
History
is the never-ending process whereby people seek to understand the past and its
many meanings. The institutional and intellectual forms of history’s dialogue
with the past have changed enormously over time, but the dialogue itself has
been part of the human experience for millennia. We all interpret and
narrate the past, which is to say that we all participate in making history.
It is among our most fundamental tools for understanding ourselves and the
world around us.
Professional
historians benefit enormously from this shared human fascination for the past. Few
fields are more accessible or engaging to members of the public. Individuals
from all backgrounds have a stake in how the past is interpreted, for it cuts
to the very heart of their identities and world views. This is why history can
evoke such passion and controversy in the public realm. All manner of people
can and do produce good history. Professional historians are wise to remember
that they will never have a monopoly on their own discipline, and that this is
much more a strength than a weakness. The openness of the discipline is among
its most attractive features, perennially renewing it and making it relevant to
new constituencies.
What,
then, distinguishes a professional historian from everyone else? Membership in
this profession is defined by self-conscious identification with a community
of historians who are collectively engaged in investigating and interpreting
the past as a matter of disciplined learned practice. Historians work in an
extraordinary range of settings: in museums and libraries and government agencies,
in schools and academic institutions, in corporations and non-profit
organizations. Some earn their living primarily from employment related to the
past; some practice history while supporting themselves in other ways. Whatever
the venue in which they work, though, professional historians share certain
core values that guide their activities and inform their judgments as they seek
to enrich our collective understanding of the past. These shared values for
conducting and assessing research, developing and evaluating interpretations,
communicating new knowledge, navigating ethical dilemmas, and, not least,
telling stories about the past, define the professional practice of history.
2.
Shared Values of Historians
Historians
strive constantly to improve our collective understanding of the past through a
complex process of critical dialogue—with each other, with the wider
public, and with the historical record—in which we explore former lives and
worlds in search of answers to the most compelling questions of our own time
and place.
Historians
cannot successfully do this work without mutual trust and respect. By
practicing their craft with integrity, historians acquire a reputation for
trustworthiness that is arguably their single most precious professional asset.
The trust and respect both of one’s peers and of the public at large are
among the greatest and most hard-won achievements that any historian can
attain. It is foolish indeed to put them at risk.
Although
historians disagree with each other about many things, they do know what they
trust and respect in each other’s work. All historians believe in honoring the
integrity of the historical record. They do not fabricate evidence. Forgery
and fraud violate the most basic foundations on which historians construct
their interpretations of the past. An undetected counterfeit undermines not
just the historical arguments of the forger, but all subsequent scholarship
that relies on the forger’s work. Those who invent, alter, remove, or destroy
evidence make it difficult for any serious historian ever wholly to trust their
work again.
We
honor the historical record, but understand that its interpretation constantly
evolves as historians analyze primary documents in light of the ever-expanding
body of secondary literature that places those documents in a larger context. By
“documents,” historians typically mean all forms of evidence—not just written
texts, but artifacts, images, statistics, oral recollections, the built and
natural environment, and many other things—that have survived as records of
former times. By “secondary literature,” we typically mean all subsequent
interpretations of those former times based on the evidence contained in
primary documents. This distinction between primary and secondary sources is
among the most fundamental that historians make. Drawing the boundary between
them is a good deal more complicated than it might seem, since determining
whether a document is primary or secondary largely depends on the questions one
asks of it. At the most basic level, though, the professional practice of
history means respecting the integrity of primary and secondary sources while
subjecting them to critical scrutiny and contributing in a fair-minded way to
ongoing scholarly and public debates over what those sources tell us about the
past.
Honoring
the historical record also means leaving a clear trail for subsequent
historians to follow. This is why scholarly apparatus in the form of
bibliographies and annotations (and associated institutional repositories like
libraries, archives, and museums) is so essential to the professional practice
of history. Such apparatus is valuable for many reasons. It enables other
historians to retrace the steps in an argument to make sure those steps are
justified by the sources. Apparatus often evaluates evidence to indicate gaps
in the historical record that might cast doubt on a given interpretation. Knowing
that trust is ultimately more important than winning a debate for the wrong
reasons, professional historians are as interested in defining the limits and
uncertainties of their own arguments as they are in persuading others that
those arguments are correct. Finally, the trail of evidence left by any single
work of history becomes a key starting point for subsequent investigations of
the same subject, and thus makes a critical contribution to our collective
capacity to ask and answer new questions about the past. For all these reasons,
historians pride themselves on the accuracy with which they use and document
sources. The sloppier their apparatus, the harder it is for other historians to
trust their work.
The
trail of evidence in bibliographies, notes, museum catalogs, databases, and
other forms of scholarly apparatus is crucial not just for documenting the
primary sources on which a work of history depends, but the secondary sources
as well. Practicing history with integrity means acknowledging one’s debts
to the work of other historians. To copy the work of another and claim it
for one’s own is plagiarism—an act historians abhor. Plagiarism violates the
historical record by failing to reveal the secondary sources that have
contributed to a given line of argument. It is a form of fraud, and betrays the
trust on which the historical profession depends. Much more will be said about
it later in this Statement on Standards.
Among
the core principles of the historical profession that can seem counterintuitive
to non-historians is the conviction, very widely if not universally shared
among historians since the nineteenth century, that practicing history with
integrity does not mean being neutral or having no point of view. Every
work of history articulates a particular, limited perspective on the past. Historians
hold this view not because they believe that all interpretations are equally
valid, or that nothing can ever be known about the past, or that facts do not
matter. Quite the contrary. History would be pointless if such claims were
true, since its most basic premise is that within certain limits we can indeed
know and make sense of past worlds and former times that now exist only as
remembered traces in the present. But the very nature of our discipline means
that historians also understand that all knowledge is situated in time and place,
that all interpretations express a point of view, and that no mortal mind can
ever aspire to omniscience. Because the record of the past is so fragmentary,
absolute historical knowledge is denied us.
Furthermore,
the different peoples whose past lives we seek to understand held views of
their lives that were often very different from each other—and from our own. Doing
justice to those views means to some extent trying (never wholly successfully)
to see their worlds through their eyes. This is especially true when people in
the past disagreed or came into conflict with each other, since any adequate
understanding of their world must somehow encompass their disagreements and
competing points of view within a broader context. Multiple, conflicting perspectives
are among the truths of history. No single objective or universal account
could ever put an end to this endless creative dialogue within and between the
past and the present.
What
is true of history is also true of historians. Everyone who comes to the study
of history brings with them a host of identities, experiences, and interests
that cannot help but affect the questions they ask of the past and the answers
they wish to know. When applied with integrity and self-critical
fair-mindedness, the political, social, and religious beliefs of historians can
appropriately inform their historical practice. Because the questions we ask
profoundly shape everything we do—the topics we investigate, the evidence we
gather, the arguments we construct, the stories we tell—it is inevitable that
different historians will produce different histories.
For this
reason, historians often disagree and argue with each other. That historians
can sometimes differ quite vehemently not just about interpretations but even
about the basic facts of what happened in the past is sometimes troubling to
non-historians, especially if they imagine that history consists of a
universally agreed-upon accounting of stable facts and known certainties. But universal
agreement is not a condition to which historians typically aspire. Instead, we understand
that interpretive disagreements are vital to the creative ferment of our
profession, and can in fact contribute to some of our most original and valuable
insights.
Frustrating
as these disagreements and uncertainties may be even for historians, they are
an irreducible feature of the discipline. In contesting each other’s
interpretations, professional historians recognize that the resulting disagreements
can deepen and enrich historical understanding by generating new questions, new
arguments, and new lines of investigation. This crucial insight underpins some
of the most important shared values that define the professional conduct of
historians. They believe in vigorous debate, but they also believe in civility.
They rely on their own perspectives as they probe the past for meaning, but
they also subject those perspectives to critical scrutiny by testing them
against the views of others.
Historians
celebrate intellectual communities governed by mutual respect and
constructive criticism. The preeminent value of such communities is
reasoned discourse—the continuous colloquy among historians holding diverse
points of view who learn from each other as they pursue topics of mutual interest.
A commitment to such discourse—balancing fair and honest criticism with
tolerance and openness to different ideas—makes possible the fruitful exchange
of views, opinions, and knowledge.
This
being the case, it is worth repeating that a great many dilemmas associated
with the professional practice of history can be resolved by returning to the
core values that the preceding paragraphs have sought to sketch. Historians
should practice their craft with integrity. They should honor the historical
record. They should document their sources. They should acknowledge their debts
to the work of other scholars. They should respect and welcome divergent points
of view even as they argue and subject those views to critical scrutiny. They
should remember that our collective enterprise depends on mutual trust. And
they should never betray that trust.
3.
Scholarship
Scholarship—the
discovery, exchange, interpretation, and presentation of information about the
past—is basic to the professional practice of history. It depends on the
collection and preservation of historical documents, artifacts, and other
source materials in a variety of institutional settings ranging from libraries
to archives to museums to government agencies to private organizations. Historians
are committed to protecting significant historical evidence wherever it resides.
Scholarship likewise depends on the open dissemination of historical knowledge
via many different channels of communication: books, articles, classrooms,
exhibits, films, historic sites, museums, legal memoranda, testimony, and many
other ways. The free exchange of information about the past is dear to
historians.
Professional
integrity in the practice of history requires awareness of one’s own biases and a
readiness to follow sound method and analysis wherever they may lead.
Historians should document their findings and be prepared to make available
their sources, evidence, and data, including any documentation they develop
through interviews. Historians should not misrepresent their sources. They
should report their findings as accurately as possible and not omit evidence
that runs counter to their own interpretation. They should not commit
plagiarism. They should oppose false or erroneous use of evidence, along with
any efforts to ignore or conceal such false or erroneous use.
Historians
should acknowledge the receipt of any financial support, sponsorship, or
unique privileges (including special access to research material) related to
their research, especially when such privileges could bias their research
findings. They should always acknowledge assistance received from
colleagues, students, research assistants, and others, and give due credit to
collaborators.
Historians
should work to preserve the historical record, and support institutions that
perform this crucial service. Historians favor free, open, equal, and
nondiscriminatory access to archival, library, and museum collections
wherever possible. They should be careful to avoid any actions that might prejudice
access for future historians. Although they recognize the legitimacy of
restricting access to some sources for national security, proprietary, and
privacy reasons, they have a professional interest in opposing unnecessary
restrictions whenever appropriate.
Historians
sometimes appropriately agree to restrictive conditions about the use of
particular sources. Certain kinds of research, certain forms of employment, and
certain techniques (for instance, in conducting oral history interviews) sometimes
entail promises about what a historian will and will not do with the resulting
knowledge. Historians should honor all such promises. They should respect the
confidentiality of clients, students, employers, and others with whom they have
a professional relationship. At much as possible, though, they should also
strive to serve the historical profession’s preference for open access to, and
public discussion of, the historical record. They should define any
confidentiality requirements before their research begins, and give public
notice of any conditions or rules that may affect the content of their work.
4.
Plagiarism
The
word plagiarism derives from Latin roots: plagiarius, an
abductor, and plagiare, to steal. The expropriation of another author’s
work, and the presentation of it as one’s own, constitutes plagiarism and is a
serious violation of the ethics of scholarship. It seriously undermines the
credibility of the plagiarist, and can do irreparable harm to a historian’s
career.
In
addition to the harm that plagiarism does to the pursuit of truth, it can also
be an offense against the literary rights of the original author and the
property rights of the copyright owner. Detection can therefore result not only
in sanctions (such as dismissal from a graduate program, denial of promotion,
or termination of employment) but in legal action as well. As a practical
matter, plagiarism between scholars rarely goes to court, in part because legal
concepts, such as infringement of copyright, are narrower than ethical
standards that guide professional conduct. The real penalty for plagiarism
is the abhorrence of the community of scholars.
Plagiarism
includes more subtle abuses than simply expropriating the exact wording of
another author without attribution. Plagiarism can also include the limited
borrowing, without sufficient attribution, of another person’s distinctive and
significant research findings or interpretations. Of course, historical
knowledge is cumulative, and thus in some contexts—such as textbooks, encyclopedia
articles, broad syntheses, and certain forms of public presentation—the form of
attribution, and the permissible extent of dependence on prior scholarship,
citation, and other forms of attribution will differ from what is expected in
more limited monographs. As knowledge is disseminated to a wide public, it
loses some of its personal reference. What belongs to whom becomes less
distinct. But even in textbooks a historian should acknowledge the sources of
recent or distinctive findings and interpretations, those not yet a part of the
common understanding of the profession. Similarly, while some forms of historical
work do not lend themselves to explicit attribution (e.g., films and
exhibitions), every effort should be made to give due credit to scholarship
informing such work.
Plagiarism,
then, takes many forms. The clearest abuse is the use of another’s language
without quotation marks and citation. More subtle abuses include the
appropriation of concepts, data, or notes all disguised in newly crafted
sentences, or reference to a borrowed work in an early note and then extensive
further use without subsequent attribution. Borrowing unexamined primary source
references from a secondary work without citing that work is likewise
inappropriate. All such tactics reflect an unworthy disregard for the
contributions of others.
No
matter what the context, the best professional practice for avoiding a
charge of plagiarism is always to be explicit, thorough, and generous in
acknowledging one’s intellectual debts.
All
who participate in the community of inquiry, as amateurs or as professionals,
as students or as established historians, have an obligation to oppose
deception. This obligation bears with special weight on teachers of graduate
seminars. They are critical in shaping a young historian’s perception of the
ethics of scholarship. It is therefore incumbent on graduate teachers to seek
opportunities for making the seminar also a workshop in scholarly integrity.
After leaving graduate school, every historian will have to depend primarily on
vigilant self-criticism. Throughout our lives none of us can cease to question
the claims to originality that our work makes and the sort of credit it grants
to others.
The
first line of defense against plagiarism is the formation of work habits that
protect a scholar from plagiarism. The plagiarist’s standard defense—that he or
she was misled by hastily taken and imperfect notes—is plausible only in the
context of a wider tolerance of shoddy work. A basic rule of good note-taking
requires every researcher to distinguish scrupulously between exact quotation
and paraphrase.
The
second line of defense against plagiarism is organized and punitive. Every
institution that includes or represents a body of scholars has an obligation to
establish procedures designed to clarify and uphold their ethical standards.
Every institution that employs historians bears an especially critical
responsibility to maintain the integrity and reputation of its staff. This
applies to government agencies, corporations, publishing firms, and public
service organizations such as museums and libraries, as surely as it does to
educational facilities. Usually, it is the employing institution that is
expected to investigate charges of plagiarism promptly and impartially and to
invoke appropriate sanctions when the charges are sustained. Penalties for
scholarly misconduct should vary according to the seriousness of the offense,
and the protections of due process should always apply. A persistent pattern of
deception may justify public disclosure or even termination of a career; some
scattered misappropriations may warrant a formal reprimand.
All
historians share responsibility for defending high standards of intellectual
integrity. When appraising manuscripts for publication, reviewing books, or
evaluating peers for placement, promotion, and tenure, scholars must evaluate
the honesty and reliability with which the historian uses primary and secondary
source materials. Scholarship flourishes in an atmosphere of openness and
candor, which should include the scrutiny and public discussion of academic
deception.
5.
Teaching
Teaching
is basic to the practice of history. It occurs in many venues: not just
classrooms, but museums and historic sites, documentaries and textbooks,
newspaper articles, web sites, and popular histories. In its broadest
definition, teaching involves the transmission of historical knowledge to
people who do not yet have such knowledge. Whether it occurs in the classroom
or the public realm, it performs the essential work of assuring that the past
remains a part of living memory in the present.
Good
teaching entails accuracy and rigor in communicating factual
information, and strives always to place such information in context to convey
its larger significance. Integrity in teaching means presenting competing
interpretations with fairness and intellectual honesty. Doing so can support
one of the most important goals of teaching: exciting the interest of those who
are encountering a new historical topic for the first time, leading them toward
the insight that history is a process of living inquiry, not an inert
collection of accepted facts.
The political,
social, and religious beliefs of history teachers necessarily inform their
work, but the right of the teacher to hold and express such convictions can
never justify falsification, misrepresentation, or concealment, or the
persistent intrusion of material unrelated to the subject of the course. Furthermore,
teachers should be mindful that students and other audience members have the
right to disagree with a given interpretation or point of view. Students should
be made aware of multiple causes and varying interpretations. Within the bounds
of the historical topic being studied, the free expression of legitimate
differences of opinion should always be a goal. Teachers should judge students’
work on merit alone.
Course
offerings, textbooks, and public history presentations should address the
diversity of human experience, recognizing that historical accuracy requires
attention both to individual and cultural similarities and differences and to
the larger global and historical context within which societies have evolved. The
American Historical Association is on record as encouraging educational and
public history activities to counter harassment and discrimination on
campuses and in the public realm. It encourages administrators to speak out
vigorously against such incidents. At the same time, the Association
disapproves of efforts to limit or punish free speech. We condemn the
violation of First Amendment rights to free speech, as well as the
harassment and vilification to which individuals have sometimes been subjected
for exercising these rights.
6.
History in the Public Realm
Because
interpreting the past is so vital to democratic debate and civic life in
the public realm, historians regularly have the opportunity to discuss the implications
of their knowledge for concerns and controversies in the present—including
present controversies about past events. It is one of the privileges of our
profession to share historical insights and interpretations with a wider public,
wherever the locus of our employment. We should welcome the chance to do so,
and the institutions that employ historians should recognize the importance of
this aspect of our work. Historians should not be subject to institutional or
professional penalties for their beliefs and activities, provided they do not
misrepresent themselves as speaking for their institutions or their
professional organizations when they are not authorized to do so.
Practicing
history in the public realm presents important challenges, for when historians
communicate with a wider public, they must represent not just a particular
interpretation or body of facts, but the best practices of the discipline of history
itself. This means they must inevitably walk a tightrope in balancing their
desire to present a particular point of view with their responsibility to
uphold the standards and values that underpin their professional authority as
historians. This challenge can be especially complex for public historians,
whose daily working lives frequently require multiple levels of accountability,
and for historians working in advocacy roles.
Public
discussions of complex historical questions inevitably translate and
simplify many technical details associated with those questions, while at
the same time suggesting at least some of the associated complexities and
divergent points of view. While it is perfectly acceptable for historians to share
their own perspectives with the public, they should also strive to demonstrate
how the historical profession links evidence with arguments to build
fair-minded, nuanced, and responsible interpretations of the past. The desire
to score points as an advocate should never tempt a historian to misrepresent
the historical record or the critical methods that the profession uses to
interpret that record.
Historians
who work in government, corporate, and nonprofit institutions, as well as those
occasionally entering public arenas as political advisers, expert witnesses, public
intellectuals, consultants, legislative witnesses, journalists, or commentators,
may face a choice of priorities between professionalism and partisanship. They
may want to prepare themselves by seeking advice from other experienced
professionals. As historians, they must be sensitive to the complexities of
history, the diversity of historical interpretations, and the limits as well as
the strengths of their own points of view and experiences and of the discipline
itself. In such situations, historians must use sources, including the work of
other scholars, with great care and should always be prepared to explain the
methods and assumptions in their research; the relations between evidence and
interpretation; and alternative interpretations of the subjects they address.
7.
Employment
The
American Historical Association firmly supports fairness and due process
in all decisions involving the appointment, promotion, and working conditions
of historians. Institutions should develop published rules governing
their employment practices, and it should go without saying that they should
follow these rules.
Although
some historians are self-employed, most work for academic institutions,
corporations, government agencies, law firms, archives, historical societies,
museums, parks, historic preservation programs, or other institutions. To the
extent they can influence the policies and practices of their workplace, the AHA
encourages historians to do whatever they can to persuade their institutions to
accept and enforce rules to ensure equity in conditions of employment. If they work
in an academic institution, they should urge it to accept the 1966 Statement
on Government of Colleges and Universities, jointly formulated by the
American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the American Council on
Education, and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and
Colleges.
Fairness
begins with recruitment. Historians have an obligation to do all
possible to ensure that employment opportunities in the field are widely
publicized and that all professionally qualified persons have an equal
opportunity to compete for those positions. This means not only the placement
of job notices in appropriate publications (for example, the AHA’s Perspectives)
but also the inclusion in such notices of a completely accurate description of
the position and of any contingencies, budgetary or otherwise, that might
affect the continued availability of the position. An institution should not
deceive possible candidates by omitting qualifications or characteristics that
favor certain candidates over others (for example, a preference for unspecified
minor fields). If an employer decides to alter a job description or selection
criteria, the institution should re-advertise.
Fairness
also involves equal treatment of all qualified applicants and procedures
that are considerate to all applicants. For example, an employing institution
should promptly acknowledge all applications and, as soon as practicable,
inform applicants who do not meet the selection criteria. Likewise, it should
keep competitive applicants informed of the progress of the search and promptly
notify those who are no longer under consideration. It should do everything
possible to accommodate finalists in arranging interviews, including the
payment of expenses, where appropriate. Finally, it should ensure that those
who conduct interviews adhere to professional standards by respecting the
dignity of candidates, focusing their questions on the qualifications needed
for the position, and avoiding questions that violate federal or state antidiscrimination
laws.
Employment
decisions always involve judgments. But, except in those cases in which federal
law allows a specific preference, institutions should base hiring decisions as
well as all decisions relating to reappointment, promotion, tenure,
apprenticeship, graduate student assistantships, awards, and fellowships solely
on professional qualifications without regard to sex, race, color, national
origin, sexual orientation, religion, political affiliation, veteran status,
age, certain physical handicaps, or marital status. A written contract
should follow a verbal offer in a timely manner, and institutions have an
obligation to explain as clearly as possible the terms of such contracts. Once
signed, a contract should be honored by all parties as both a legal and ethical
obligation. Employers have an obligation to clarify all rules and conditions
governing employment and promotion.
Once
employed, any person deserves the professional respect and support
necessary for professional growth and advancement. Such respect precludes
unequal treatment based on any nonprofessional criteria. In particular, it
precludes any harassment or discrimination, which is unethical,
unprofessional, and threatening to intellectual freedom. Harassment includes
all behavior that prevents or impairs an individual’s full enjoyment of
educational or workplace rights, benefits, environment, or opportunities, such
as generalized pejorative remarks or behavior or the use of professional
authority to emphasize inappropriately the personal identity of an individual.
Sexual harassment, which includes inappropriate requests for sexual favors,
unwanted sexual advances, and sexual assaults, is illegal and violates
professional standards.
Historians
should receive promotions and merit salary increases exclusively on the basis
of professional qualifications and achievements. The best way to ensure that
such criteria are used is to establish clear standards and procedures
known to all members of the institution. An institution should have an
established review process, should offer candidates for promotion or merit
raises opportunities to substantiate their achievements, should provide early
and specific notification of adverse promotion or salary decisions, and should
provide an appeal mechanism.
Of
particularly grave concern to historians are those institutional decisions that
lead to disciplinary action—most important, questions of suspension and
dismissal, because they may involve issues of intellectual freedom. All
institutions employing historians should develop and follow clearly written procedures
governing disciplinary action. These procedures should embody the principles of
due process, including adequate mechanisms for fact-finding and avenues for
appeal. Academic institutions should adhere to the AAUP’s 1940 Statement of
Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Other institutions that employ
professional historians should provide a comparable standard of due process.
Historians
who work part time or off the tenure track should receive
compensation in proportion to the share of a full-time work load they carry,
including a proportionate share of fringe benefits available to their full-time
colleagues; they also should have access to institutional facilities and
support systems, and appropriate involvement in institutional governance.
8.
Reputation and Trust
Historians
are obligated to present their credentials accurately and honestly in
all contexts. They should take care not to misrepresent their qualifications in
resumes, applications, or the public record. They should apply the same rigor
and integrity in describing their own accomplishments as their profession
applies to the historical record itself.
The
status of a book, article, or other publication that is still in the production
pipeline is often an important piece of information for search committees,
tenure/promotion review committees, and fellowship committees. Yet the
profession has no standardized terminology for works in progress, often
rendering their status unclear. The AHA suggests the following lexicon.
- “In
Press”: the manuscript is fully copyedited and out of the author’s hands.
It is in the final stages of the production process.
- “Forthcoming”:
a completed manuscript has been accepted by a press or journal.
- “Under
contract to . . .”: a press and an author have signed a contract for a
book in progress, but the final manuscript has not yet been submitted.
- “Submitted”
or “under consideration”: the book or article has been submitted to a
press or journal, but there is as yet no contract or agreement to publish.
Historians
should not list among the completed achievements on their resumes degrees or
honors they have never earned, jobs they have never held, articles or books
they have never written or published, or any comparable misrepresentations of
their creative or professional work.
Historians
should be mindful of any conflicts of interest that may arise in the
course of their professional duties. A conflict of interest arises when an
individual’s personal interest or bias could compromise (or appear to
compromise) his or her ability to act in accordance with professional
obligations. Historians frequently encounter such situations as participants in
some form of peer review—for example, reviewing grant applications, vetting
manuscripts for publication, evaluating annual meeting program proposals, or selecting
prize or award recipients. Historians should identify and, where appropriate,
recuse themselves from any decisions or other actions in which a conflict of
interest or the appearance thereof arises; they should avoid situations in
which they may benefit or appear to benefit financially at the expense of their
professional obligations. An individual should normally refuse to participate
in the formal review of work by anyone for whom he or she feels a sense of
personal obligation, competition, or enmity.
9.
Additional Guidance
This
Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct offers general guidance
about core values and practices of the historical profession. Because no
document of this sort could ever be comprehensive, the AHA typically amends this
Statement only when some new issue arises that is of such general
concern that a formal policy declaration seems warranted.
For
additional advice about ethics and best practices among professional
historians, readers are urged to consult other declarations and publications of
the American Historical Association, including best practice statements and
wise counsel documents readily available on the AHA
web site.
Valuable
insights can also be gleaned from the publications of several other historical
associations, for instance, the Ethics Guidelines of the National
Council on Public History; the Statement of Professional Standards and
Ethics of the American Association for State and Local History; the Evaluation
Guidelines of the Oral History Association; and the Principles and
Standards for Federal Historical Programs of the Society for History in the
Federal Government, among others.
We
encourage all historians to uphold and defend their professional
responsibilities with the utmost seriousness, and to advocate for integrity and
fairness and high standards throughout the historical profession.
Copyright © American Historical Association.
http://www.historians.org/pubs/free/professionalstandards.cfm on April 25, 2005
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