I have access through my university as a student, so I usually look at what electronic journals are published in my areas of research and interest (not usually the same things...) Typically each journal has some sort of group or association behind it with a website, so I can see at least the headlines if I can't get through their paywall to actual articles.

If you're talking news in general, I regularly visit here just to see what's going on in medieval resarch and for open-access papers. I also follow some people on twitter like this one for tidbits and such on the classical world. Following museums and organisations - and some academic publishers as well - on twitter/facebook is how I see what's being talked about in a informal way.

And I agree on the blogs - current research can take a while :)

The American Historical Association is the biggest organization for historians in the US. They have a journal, the American Historical Review, and a number of magazines that are great to keep up with the state of the profession.

Most subfields have their own organizations, too. For example, the Organization of American Historians is for historians who study the US. They also have a journal and other resources. Then, there are other organizations; for example, the Southern Historical Association for historians who study the US South; the Society of Civil War Historians, for those of us who study the US Civil War. Most major fields have their own organizations and/or journals.

You may wish to check out H-net. It is an internet resource with a bunch of listservs for various fields. For example, I belong to H-Slavery, H-Civil War, H-Early America. There are a bunch of them.

You may also find an author/historian you like, and follow them on Twitter. Then, you can check out their followers/who they follow to get a sense of what historians are discussing. the hashtag #twitterstorians is always a good resource, too.

Source: I have a PhD in American History, teach history in a university.

So this may seem elementary, but I actually really like the National Geographic History Magazine. I'm busy nowadays and don't get to keep up with reading the way I used to. I find this magazine pretty helpful in terms of getting research or learning more about a lot of different topics. It comes out quarterly, and there are hardly any adverts inside (just usually on the inside of the magazine's covers).

For American history, you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a journal that's more useful than Reviews in American History. Excellent review essays. Each one places a book (or books) in conversation with the others in the field. Well worth the time, and a fantastic way to keep up with tangential interests.

I really like BBC's History Magazine.

My specialisation is quite narrow, so I actively follow J. Cold War Stud., Kritika, J. Baltic Stud. and J. Econ. Hist.

The general prime staple journals are the American History Review and Cambridge History Journal. If you're confident in your German you can also try out the Historische Zeitschrift.

I get a lot of access through my University, however, I am also on the email list for 2 free historical review publications:

[Brynn Mawr Classical Review] (http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/)

[The Medieval Review] (https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr)

I find it helps me keep somewhat up to date on new publications. Obviously those 2 journal only cover limited subjects.

German historian here.

For journals, I regularly read the American Historical Review (AHR), Central European History (CEH), and the German Studies Review (GSR).

I skim the Journal of Modern History (JMH), German History, and Geschichte und Gesellschaft, and Historische Zeitschrift (HZ). (I should be reading them, but who's got the time??!) Also Past & Present, because they occasionally have cool stuff.

For news-type updates, I rely pretty heavily on H-German and H-Soz und Kult.

I know there's probably a great many German history sites/pages/blogs I should be visiting, but I haven't gotten into the habit. (EDIT: I'm old.)

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd welcome them!

I'll mention something no one else has - I get most of my news through Google Scholar alerts set to keywords of my interest, it sends me newly indexed scholarly articles (and theses, and some other junk) in my field. This is good if you are a bit of a hedgehog and want to keep track of a very particular field that is going to be unified with 5-7 keywords. This may work for you if you're really into something, but if you set a google alert for "history" you're probably going to have a bad time! :)

The Smithsonian Magazine has a nice mix of both current events and history news. Archaeology, history, and even articles featuring artifacts within the actual Smithsonian museum.

Do you currently have access to jounals? Also, what type of history? The American historical review. Is probably the go to journal, but there are many specific journals that may be better suited to a specific topics that you like.

Follow up: which books would you recommend for a general refreshment of my history knowledge which is rusty since high school?

If you're interested in the history of science, you can read the unfortunately titled ISIS, which is published by university of Chicago.

Latin American historian here.

I also read the American Historical Review regularly. For Latin American topics, the two best journals are generally considered to be Hispanic American Historical Review (HAHR), published in the US, and the Journal of Latin American Studies (JLAS), published in England.

Most professional historians in academia are tied into various peer networks: listservs, Facebook groups and friends, Twitter (check out the hashtag #Twitterstorians), professional societies such as the American Historical Association and the North American Conference on British Studies, and offline personal and professional relationships. H-Net is a good resource. There are numerous serious academic blogs that cater to different historical constituencies; the Society for US Intellectual History blog is an example. The New Books Network group of podcasts is worth noting.

In terms of journals I will usually glance at the table of contents of Twentieth Century British History, Victorian Studies, the Journal of British Studies, Modern Intellectual History, the American Historical Review, Past & Present, etc. But usually I just find out about individual articles of interest in these or other journals by word of mouth or through some kind of specific search I am conducting.

I do a lot of podcasts that cover a lot of different topics. Some of them are pop culture type levels, others are more serious. There are a lot of esoteric stuff not really covered (regional, various interest), but those are starting to lessen a bit.

I check a few journals that my college library has.

This is awfully specific, but as it's my field I read it regularly. The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era speaks for itself. It publishes articles about US History between the end of the Civil War and the end of World War I, although the latter limit has become a little more flexible recently. As others have stated, the American Historical Review is also a top contender.

In addition to the American Historical Review (AHR), you can also check out the Journal of American History (JAH). There are also a ton of more specific academic, refereed journals as other people are referring to. As far as easier to read, shorter information on history being done, simply check out any reputable site, as long as they cite academic journals or published, peer-reviewed studies.

A feature I find handy is that Oxford University Press ─ publisher of the Journal of American History and the American Historical Review ─ has an alert feature that sends you an email whenever a new issue is published. What's more, OUP lets you read the table of contents so you know if there's something interesting inside. It's an easy way to stay up to date on things you might be interested in.

For me, in addition to AHR and JAH, I get alerts on Diplomatic History, the official journal of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations; Western Historical Quarterly, and Environmental History.

The last one is something that I think more folks here should consider. Environmental history is a relatively new subfield, and there's a lot of good stuff being produced by historians there, mainly because it is so new and really on the cutting edge of analysis.

One thing that I find incredibly useful to do is follow historians on Twitter. Historians love to talk, particularly about their field, and they're not shy about sharing new information, new finds, and other things. Sure, you're welcome to follow me @AK_OK (shameless plug), but there's people like Joanne Freeman (@jbf1755), Adam Tooze (@adam_Tooze), Alex Wellerstein (@wellerstein), and Sara Damiano (@SaraTDamiano) to name just a few.

There's also great organizations that post good stuff on Twitter frequently. There's Backstory (@BackStoryRadio), JSTOR Daily (@JSTOR_Daily), and Oxford University Press history (@OUPHistory) to name just a few. Process History (@processhistory) is new but promising.

An easy way to search for accounts to follow is to do a search under the hashtag #AHA17; that was the tag for the American Historical Association's annual meeting this year.

Wikipedia. LOL Just kidding.

I listen to a pretty wide variety of history podcasts that will introduce me to a new aspect of a time period. Then I'll research it further to find a book or two on the topic. I've always dabbled in medical history (especially in the 19th Century) so the Sawbones podcast has been an awesome recent discovery. They've been going for a few years now, so I'm happily binge listening to all kinds of medical history.

I also find out about some pretty narrowly focused topics through working on theses with students.

Lately, I've been working with a bunch of other historians contributing to books on a series of battles during the Civil War (we all write a chapter on a different aspect). It has been fun to read their super narrow focused aspects on various battles.

Archivist so my perspective might be different. The researchers who come in are a great gauge of what research is going on in the field as well as exposing me to records/topics I would have not been otherwise. In addition to archives/records management specific journals and publications, I look at the Council on Public History, American Association on Local and State History, regional historical associations, and subject based organizations.

I do Austrian history and get most of my up to sagen info through the Austrian History Yearbook, and from the Center for Austrian studies. It also helps that I work there.

The Historian, it's Phi Alpha Theta's quarterly (the National History Honor Society).

Are there any good blogs/youtube channels/journals on colonialism or south asian (particularly indian) history?

Though it was mentioned in passing earlier, H-Net deserves more attention. Since the early 1990s it has provided one of the most important networks for hosting discussions among historians and has spawned many dozens of topic-specific lists. While formerly managed as email lists, a few years ago they all migrated to the web so are now easy to access for archival searches. I have been on several of these for 20+ years and continue to rely on them to access professional news, cutting-edge scholarship, reviews, and discussions in each of the subfields I consider important to my work.

Note that the "H" in H-Net formally stands for "humanities," but the vast majority of the original lists were history. There are still 41 lists covering topics in American history alone, including topics ranging from the Civil War to state history to the history of American communism.