The federal government released its revised protocol for Institutional Review Boards, which “explicitly removes” oral history and journalism from the regulations. The final rule provides that, “For purposes of this part, the following activities are deemed not to be research: (1) Scholarly and journalistic activities (e.g., oral history, journalism, biography, literary criticism, legal research, and historical scholarship), including the collection and use of information that focus directly on the specific individuals about whom the information is collected.”
The historical community, collaborating through the National Coalition for History, has long argued that scholarly history projects should not be subject to standard IRB procedures, and in November 2015, the AHA issued a public statement in support of these revisions. The new IRB rule goes into effect in one year, on January 19, 2018.