This week’s scholarship about scholarship:
Wolotira, Alena L., From a Trickle to a Flood: A Case Study of the Current Index to Legal Periodicals to Examine the Swell of American Law Journals Published in the Last Fifty Years (June 21, 2011). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1869328
Using the lists of journals indexed in the Current Index to Legal Periodicals from the last fifty years, this article analyzes the increase in the number of general law reviews, specialized law journals, student-edited journals, and peer-edited and refereed law journals over the last half-century. Data from the Current Index to Legal Periodicals was combined with further data collected from HeinOnline, American Bar Association statistics, and U.S. News & World Report statistics. Comparison of this data shows not only a massive increase in the number of law journal titles being published, but also suggests a correlation between the number of law journals published by a law school and its student population, length of time that it has been accredited by the American Bar Association, and its U.S. News & World Report ranking.
Levit, Nancy, MacLachlan, Lawrence Duncan and Rostron, Allen K., Submission of Law Student Articles for Publication (July 26, 2010). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1656395
Each year law students collectively write a large number of papers that could become law review articles but that are never published. Most law schools require students at some point during their time in law school to research and write an academic paper of publishable quality or seminar paper. Some of these are law review notes and comments that are not selected for publication. Others of these are papers written for specific substantive classes or to fulfill research and writing requirements.
Most of these student papers – even very worthy ones – will never be published or posted online. The publishing route for law students who want to publish in a venue other than their home law journal is not clearly marked. And many law reviews simply will not accept submissions from students outside their own school. Often, the publishing opportunities for non-law review members in their home schoolÂ’s law review are also not well known.
The purposes of this essay are twofold. First, it offers a number of suggestions for law students (and implicitly for students in other graduate programs) who want to publish their research papers. Second, this essay presents a chart of the policies of 194 law reviews with respect to whether they will publish comments submitted by non-law review members who are students at their home school or notes, comments or articles submitted by law students from other schools.
We hope that this weekly listing of scholarship about scholarship alerts our readers to some interesting new work. It is not meant to be a comprehensive bibliography.
If you would like to recommend some scholarship about scholarship, send a note to legalscholarshipblog [at] gmail.com.
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