By virtue of his rank of vice president, he was chairman of the Emperor Nicholas II Foundation to assist writers and scholars.

He was also a member of the Archaeographic Commission of the Moscow Archaeological Society [fr; ru; uk] from 1876, becoming ruler of affairs in 1892 and chairman in 1899.

In 1889, Maykov edited a compilation of works by Konstantin Batyushkov with the assistance of Vladimir Saitov).

In an era of almost undivided domination of the mythological explanation of folk poetry, he put forward a historical point of view on the origin of Russian epics, which is still respected by scholars.

Many heroes of epics – Dobrynya, Alyosha Popovich, Sadko, Ilya Muromets – the author, comparing the annals, considers them to be truly existing; in household details, he indicates traces of the actual historical life of 10th–13th centuries.