Ramsay: SSRN and Law Journals – Rivals or Allies?

Professor Ian Ramsay of University of Melbourne Law School has published SSRN and Law Journals – Rivals or Allies? International Journal of Legal Information, Vol. 40, No. 1-2, pp. 134-145 (2012).

Here is the abstract:

The author identifies and evaluates the respective merits of publication in law journals and publication on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) – the largest open access repository for legal scholarship. This evaluation leads to the conclusion that at this stage of the evolution of law journals and SSRN, there are advantages in authors publishing both in journals and on SSRN. However, publication on SSRN can have particular advantages for authors in smaller countries.

Widener on Making Law Journal Content More Accessible to the Public

Michael N. Widener, JD, MS, has published Driving Pedestrian Traffic to Law Journals, Law Library Journal, 14(4), 569-575 (2012).

Here is the abstract:

Recent technological advances enable the legal academy and law student editors to embed aids to understanding the law journal’s content in the articles and student notes published there. As there are compelling social purposes for making the content of law journals more accessible to lay inquirers, the author advocates incorporating into law journals devices such as QR codes and content summaries written for the layperson.

Pearse and Keele on How Librarians Can Help Improve Law Journal Publishing

Michelle Pearse of the Harvard Law School Library and Benjamin Keele of the William and Mary Wolf Law Library, have posted How Librarians Can Help Improve Law Journal Publishing, on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Librarians are well-positioned to improve law journal publishing and help it evolve in the ever-changing digital environment. They can provide student editors with advice on a variety of issues such as copyright, data, preservation, and version control. Librarians can also help journals adopt technical standards and improve the discoverability and usability of journal content. While few libraries can adopt all these suggestions, a checklist of ideas is provided to help librarians select those that are most suitable to their libraries and journals.

Click here for a poster related to this paper.

Click here for a list of resources related to this topic.

AALL 2011

The program for AALL 2011: The American Association of Law Libraries’ Annual Meeting, held 23-26 July 2011 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, includes several legal informatics presentations and posters.

Click here for the conference program.

Click here for the list of posters.

Click here for archived Twitter tweets from the conference.

Twitter hashtags for the conference appear to be #AALL11 and #AALL2011.

Slides and videos for some presentations are available here.

Audio for most presentations is (or will be) available here for a fee.

Leong and Mullins: An Empirical Examination of Gender and Student Note Publication 1999-2009

Professor Nancy Leong of William and Mary Law School and Jennifer Mullins of American University Washington College of Law have posted An Empirical Examination of Gender and Student Note Publication 1999-2009, forthcoming in American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy and the Law. Here is the abstract:

This Article presents original empirical research documenting a significant gender disparity in student note publication. Examination of the notes published during a ten-year time span in the general-interest law reviews at fifty-two schools — a total of nearly six thousand notes —r eveals that women authored approximately forty percent of student notes, while men published almost sixty percent. At thirteen schools, women authored fewer than thirty-five percent of published student notes. The Article proposes a range of explanations for the disparity, recognizing that the explanation may differ from one school to the next and from one year to the next at the same school. Moreover, the Article argues that the disparity matters: it has negative consequences for women’s careers years after graduation from law school. Consequently, the Article concludes by offering some preliminary ideas about what law students, law reviews, and faculty members might do to remedy the gender disparity, and by encouraging stakeholders in the note publication process to continue the conversation within their institutions.

Hart on Indexing Open Access Law Journals

Edward T. Hart of the University of Florida Legal Information Center has published Indexing Open Access Law Journals…or Maybe Not, International Journal of Legal Information, 38(1), 19-42 (2010) (article 5). Here is a summary:

[W]hat would be the results of a …study of the law journals listed in the [Directory of Open Access Journals, DOAJ]? That is what I set out to discover. [In this article] are:

• a brief description of scholarly open access publishing and the Directory,
• a look at the law journals listed in the DOAJ,
• standards for selection of journals for indexing in the four primary indexes used in United States legal research,
• results of the study of inclusion of DOAJ law journals in these four indexes, and
• a conclusion that considers what the impact of indexing – or not indexing – open access journals means for legal research.

Open Access Law Journals: Request for Input

I’m updating a list of open access law journals:

• Click here for the list in .xlsx format;
• Click here for the list in .ods format.

On this list I’m including legal periodicals that fit the definition of “open access” adopted by the signers of the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship.

If you know of open access law journals that are not on this list, I’d be grateful if you would please list them and their URLs in the comments to this post.

Click here for resources about open access to legal resources.

Click here for Dean Danner’s recent article about open access to legal scholarship.

Click here for Edward Hart’s new article on indexing open access law journals.

Click here for Dean Danner’s recent Berkman Center presentation about open access to legal scholarship.

Click here for video of the recent Duke Law School conference on the Durham Statement and open access to legal scholarship.

Thanks!

Childress: “Stanford Law Review Goes Ebook…in Kindle, Nook, and iPad Editions”

Alan Childress writes, at Legal Profession Blog:

Becoming the first general law review to publish its current issues as an ebook (plus its traditional print volumes), the Stanford Law Review now includes Kindle and the other ebook formats in its distribution. I helped the editors digitize the first academic-year issue, Vol. 63, #1, as part of my ‘Quid Pro Books’ project. Issue 2 will soon follow.

For now, Issue 1 is available in the Amazon Kindle store (and its UK store); at Barnes & Noble for Nook; on the iPad with these apps and also Apple’s iTunes bookstore; and in multiple formats including Sony, ePub, and rtf at Smashwords…. 

HT @jimmilles.

More on: Why Are Some Law Journal Publishers Not Using the Web to Promote Their Articles?

My new post at Slaw, entitled More on: Finding Hidden Treasure, discusses an odd circumstance in legal publishing: certain law journal publishers are not promoting (i.e., not posting interoperable metadata) or licensing the articles in their journals on the Web. This post explores possible reasons for this publishing practice, and suggests how the legal community and the broader scholarly/professional publishing community might respond.

Why Are Some Law Journal Publishers Not Using the Web to Promote Their Articles?

My new post at Slaw, entitled Finding Hidden Treasure, explores an odd circumstance in legal publishing: certain law journal publishers are not promoting or licensing the articles in their journals on the Web. This post profiles three such journals — which publish articles of interest to lawyers and nonlawyers in multiple jurisdictions — and suggests that opportunities may be lost due to the choice not to use the Web to publicize or license these articles.