Prospects for a transparency revolution in the field of business history

Abstract

The last five years have seen is an increasing emphasis on research transparency in many disciplines. Unfortunately, the field of business history is being bypassed by the movement for the creation of research transparency institutions. The article begins by showing why it is important for the business history community to engage with the research transparency movement by embracing the principle of Open Data. The article then argues that Active Citation is the right variant of Open Data for the business–history community and that the widespread adoption of Active Citation in the field of business history would be promoted by the creation of a specialised repository for business–historical research data. The challenges involved in establishing such a repository are discussed. The article concludes by arguing that business historical journals and monograph publishers should not require authors to use Active Citation; rather, contributors should merely be required to state whether they have made the data underlying their article available online.