About H-Net

An international consortium of scholars and teachers, H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online creates and coordinates networks with the common objective of advancing teaching and research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. H-Net is committed to pioneering the use of new content management and communication technology to facilitate the free exchange of academic ideas and scholarly resources. In light of that committment, in 2014 H-Net migrated from the listserv platform that had served its subscribers for nearly two decade to a Drupal-based content management platform, the H-Net Commons.

Among H-Net's most important activities is its sponsorship of 200 free interactive networks edited by scholars in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and the Pacific.

Subscribers and editors communicate directly via discussions posted to the network homepage which can also be sent out as email notifications. These messages are permanently saved at the network and they can be copied, printed out, or relayed to someone else via email notification. The networks are all public, and can be quoted and cited with proper attribution. The networks are content managment sites built using Drupal that store discussion threads, important documents, and links to related sites on the web.

H-Net networks reach over 100,000 subscribers in more than 90 countries. Subscriptions are screened by the network's editors to promote a diverse readership dedicated to friendly, productive, scholarly communications. Each network publishes between 15 and 60 messages a week. Subscription applications are solicited from scholars, teachers, professors, researchers, graduate students, journalists, librarians and archivists.

Each network has its own "personality," is edited by a team of scholars, and has a board of editors; many are cosponsored by a professional society. The editors control the flow of information, commission reviews, reject inflamatory language and items unsuitable for scholarly discussion, and direct the uploading and management of content such as syllabi, archival databases, image archives, podcasts, videos and more.

The goals of H-Net networks are to enable scholars to easily communicate about, and collaborate on, current research and teaching interests; to discuss new approaches, methods and tools of analysis; to share information on internet resources, books, and articles; and to test new ideas and share comments on the literature in their fields.

H-Net is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization governed by a seventeen-member Executive Council and administered by H-Net Directorate, which consists of the Executive Director and the Associate Directors of networks and reviews. For instructions on how to reach support staff, see our Contact page.