The Future of Law Reviews
Yesterday at 3PM, representatives from most of the several Berkeley Law Reviews (including CLR, ELQ, BTLJ, BJIL, BJCL, AALJ, BJAAL, and others) met with Bob Berring and KVH from the library. The topic of the meeting was the complete digitization of law reviews (as in, there would be no more print editions). Some journals were concerned about the loss in revenue from subscriptions, but the group generally agreed that this revenue merely offset the production and print costs anyway. Subscriptions for law reviews have been going down across the board, which means reduced exposure for journals, and an accompanying loss in prestige. BB made the point that once you lose your influence, it's really hard to get it back. So the choice has become to maintain a print edition, making a diminishing amount of money and facing a loss of exposure, or bite the bullet and make the issues available for free online, raising exposure. Prompting this discussion in the first place is the "Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship", a call to action by the law libraries of the top 20 (or so) law schools.
A somewhat-related issue discussed was an enhanced online presence for the journals. ELQ has led the way here; I'm embarrassed to say that the BTLJ's website is severely lacking, though this is changing. The cost of improving BLaw's online presence is a concern for many journals, so some collaboration was discussed in order to share resources and reduce costs across the board. I suspect this goal is more secondary, but some careful planning on uniformity now would pay dividends in the future (as opposed to letting the various journals' web presence grow organically, and then try to force them into uniform molds). This isn't to say that the websites would have to look alike, or that there would be any loss of autonomy for any journals. Rather, things like design costs, IT, hosting/storage costs could be shared.
Thoughts? I love that we're abandoning the print volumes. It's shameful we haven't made this leap before. One editor raised the concern that there are "some old judges" that still prefer the print volumes, but the sad truth is that those old judges are only getting older. I suspect some traditionalists on here will be upset, and I can't deny that I take delight in forcing my technologically progressive ideals down their throats! BB mentioned that the law school was prepared to help with the transition costs, and supplement (temporarily) any lost revenue. Further, if someone absolutely demanded a print copy, we could always print one off relatively cheaply (though not in the fancy print-volume format that we use now). Also, trees will be saved. Are there any other issues that we're missing?
A somewhat-related issue discussed was an enhanced online presence for the journals. ELQ has led the way here; I'm embarrassed to say that the BTLJ's website is severely lacking, though this is changing. The cost of improving BLaw's online presence is a concern for many journals, so some collaboration was discussed in order to share resources and reduce costs across the board. I suspect this goal is more secondary, but some careful planning on uniformity now would pay dividends in the future (as opposed to letting the various journals' web presence grow organically, and then try to force them into uniform molds). This isn't to say that the websites would have to look alike, or that there would be any loss of autonomy for any journals. Rather, things like design costs, IT, hosting/storage costs could be shared.
Thoughts? I love that we're abandoning the print volumes. It's shameful we haven't made this leap before. One editor raised the concern that there are "some old judges" that still prefer the print volumes, but the sad truth is that those old judges are only getting older. I suspect some traditionalists on here will be upset, and I can't deny that I take delight in forcing my technologically progressive ideals down their throats! BB mentioned that the law school was prepared to help with the transition costs, and supplement (temporarily) any lost revenue. Further, if someone absolutely demanded a print copy, we could always print one off relatively cheaply (though not in the fancy print-volume format that we use now). Also, trees will be saved. Are there any other issues that we're missing?
Labels: Academia
posted by Toney at 12:34 PM
21 Comments:
Assuming the line about lower revenue and lower costs offsetting each other is right, this strikes me as something that should've happened years ago. But I'd love to hear someone make the case for sticking with print.
Putting everything online presumes that everyone has access to the internet. That is not necessarily the case. (Though, I couldn't tell you how many people with no internet access are reading law journals. So this may not be a problem. But it nevertheless remains an often overlooked concern.)
Matt: counter arg is that the law review journals must be purchased unless you have access to a library. However, any library also has access to internet on public computers (and certainly more libraries have internet than law review journals).
One benefit of print is that professional typesetters make decisions affecting readability. Thus a possible cost of going online is that non-experts (re: students) will be publishing journals which might have the default MS Word settings: Times New Roman, 12pt, one-inch margins, which is, frankly, wretched. There is no necessity, of course, typesetting principles are freely available online, but the inertia of MS Word is significant, as is double-spacing.
I'm confused. Is this definitely happening or still up for debate? Is it all or nothing or can some journals opt in and others out?
Any comparison data? Is this shift away from print happening at other schools? I find the change much more problematic if Boalt journals stand alone. I can't help but think a journal looks less professional and less influential if it appears only online. Not being able to turn a profit on the print editions when your competitors can says something. Once that battle is lost, maybe online-only is the best option, but I do think it casts the journal in a unfavorable light.
3:06 -
Great point. I also find the typical/default Word settings to be a festering swamp of awful, but here again is a situation where the various journals could collaborate and create sweet eye candy of our own. Not just across Berkeley's journals either; this is be something that could be shared across schools, and would have only minimal initial costs. Further, there doesn't have to be a single standard, but rather a virtual bevy of acceptable substitutes.
In any event, I would hope that there are journal members (smarter than me) that could figure this out.
Laura, the "Durham statement" is signed by most of the top 20 law schools (a quick glance tells me Virginia and Michigan are missing), so we wouldn't be alone. I don't know that it's something that is mandatory immediately, but I suspect there would be fierce pressure on the journals that resist. Just my $.02.
And it isn't that Berkeley's journals aren't turning a profit relative to other schools. It's that all law reviews are facing dwindling subscription numbers as more and more users focus on current digital offerings. Given the print volume's diminishing subscriptions, and combine it with the digital trends in research, and I would guess that by adhering to print volumes, journals are actually becoming less read and utilized.
But again, much of this is my speculation.
What affect would this have on the availability of articles on Westlaw and Lexis? Would they still be available through those sources? Would the articles be available through those sources as soon as they were publicly available on the journal website?
I think this is something important to consider not only for research and citation purposes, but also because many journals receive decent royalty checks from the Lexis and Westlaw.
One thing I've always liked about print versions of any reference material is that sometimes another article will catch your eye and you'll start reading it, even if it wasn't your initial target. This doesn't go away with digitization, I suppose, if you bundle the articles online by issue (which I assume everyone will), but actually having the article in-hand was always nice and led me to read about things I otherwise wouldn't have.
Also exist general readability concerns aside from the elegant typesetting of the current print editions. It's nice to have something bound that you can page through. Though maybe I'm sounding like Micheal Scott here, all tied to my old paper ways.
You can see here that Harvard appears to post their past five volumes. A link on the bottom indicates that for older volumes, you've got to talk to William S. Hein & Co., Inc. (I assume this means you've got to get a HeinOnline account). I would assume this limited availability is either due to some agreement between Harvard and Hein or just because HLR doesn't want the cost of keeping all of their past volumes available on their website (I'd bet that takes up a lot of space).
As for Westlaw and Lexis, there should still be a demand for them given their superior search capabilities. Of course, Google could trump that if everything was available for free.
I wonder if it would be feasible for all journals to combine their efforts in a free HeinOnline-esque database funded with advertisements. This would be similar to the law journals database on Hein, but free. Sort of like cutting the middle man.
Of course, how the revenue would be divided among the participating journals would probably be a highly disputed topic with certain journals expecting a bigger piece of the pie.
Caley, the issues would still be available on Hein, Lexis and Westlaw. As far as lost revenue goes, I would be surprised if they made very much at all from L&W. In fact, if law firms kicked over even a tenth of what they spend on lexis and westlaw in donation form, the journals would have so much money, they wouldn't know what to do with it.
That aside, ELQ is currently digitizing all their past volumes, and I know BTLJ would like to as well. It really wouldn't take up that much space... searchable pdf's are smallish.
1. The problem is redundancy, not cost. The audience for law journals (law professors and students) already have paid access to all these articles electronically. When was the last time you saw someone read an article out of a bound volume?
2. The environmental argument is naive, because many (if not most) people who download an article online end up printing it out on their personal printer.* (Granted, maybe they do that anyway these days.) To the extent that multiple people read the each (print media) issue, mass has less of a carbon footprint than all those personal printers spitting out single-use copies.
* I know someone will say, "Hey, I read everything on my computer screen!" My response: congratulations. But you are not in the majority.
3. The Durham Statement is a distinct issue from digitalization. In the absence of a print media version, the earned income of law journals would come from database licensing fees, not subscriptions. But the effect would be the same. In contrast, the Durham Statement is a commitment to "give away" the journal's product for free.
4. The "exposure/access" dichotomy is misleading, because nearly all law journal articles are available on electronic databases. And many journals already offer both online and print versions. No law library subscribes to Harvard Law Review due to the lack of an electronic alternative source.
5. Digitalization provides greater exposure not because people can go to a journal's website, but because they don't have to go to the journal at all. Westlaw keyword sources are the great law journal equalizer. Whatever the search algorithm recalls will get read, regardless of source. But nobody is going to go to the website of [REDACTED] just in case they might have published an article on a relevant topic.
6. Although CLR provides PDFs of current issues, I can't imagine it going solely digital for some time. Other organizations may actually be more efficacious as an online forum than as a print medium.
7. Don't we already have the prototype for a shared electronic resource/support for journals in Boalt.org? But I think we're actually moving away from that model.
8. The Hein licensing agreement may prevent a PDF archive of old issues.
9. There are several Berkeley Law journals, but only one Law Review.
Carbolic:
1. It isn't just professors and students reading journal articles. Everyone else has to pay a TON to get access to lexis & westlaw. The redundancy "problem" isn't a problem at all. And yes, the issue is revenue.
2. The environmental argument isn't really an argument at all. Rather, it's a cheap throwaway that I included in a 5-word sentence at the end of my post for mostly humor's sake. You aren't that daft, I hope. Space (how much the print volumes take up in libraries), on the other hand, is the main reason our library signed on. They recently had to ship a bunch of old journals to storage bc they were running out of space.
3. I appreciate this distinction. I never confused the two.
4. The dichotomy is not misleading. Not everyone has access to the online databases, as I've mentioned before. And not every journal has a digital companion version. Law libraries subscribe to the print version of HLR bc they always have; this is what we're trying to change.
5. You're wrong. Digitization provides greater exposure because hosting the articles on a journal's website makes them searchable on databases (such as google.com) that non-students/professors use. I think you put too much reliance on access to legal databases. In fact, I suspect that Westlaw & Lexis will someday (hopefully soon) be replaced by a free alternative. I think most others agree with me.
6. I suspect you're right, but CLR may surprise you.
7. The framework is there, but it's very minimal at this point.
8. BTLJ is actually in talks with Hein about providing digital versions for us. If this falls through, journals maintain their own copyright, and would be able to create their own. I would be shocked if the Hein licensing agreement forbade this.
9. My bad. Might I suggest a beer and a deep breath?
What is BJAAL?
looks like CLR is getting left behind:
http://volokh.com/posts/1240358539.shtml
Print journals are obsolete. But the journals can take a note from Google and advertise. Journals have benefactors. On the main page make the prominent so that you let them use part of the journal website as advertising.
If CLR is getting left behind, then so are Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, & Columbia Law Review. CLR likes to think those are its peer journals, not that lesser, garish law review to the south.
I worry that until it becomes universal, not issuing print editions may reduce our journal's "prestige." I recently submitted an article to law journals for publication, and viewed electronic-only journals (e.g. Virginia Journal of Law & Tech) skeptically, because I wasn't sure whether it meant they weren't well established or weren't widely-read enough to issue print editions.
I'm not opposed to going fully digital. I think it's inevitable, so might as well get the jump on it.
I wonder how well-organized this has been, though, since just last week I had a conversation with Berkeley's publishing director regarding journal publication. She mentioned that most journals were losing money and would have to cut back to publishing just once a year. She didn't say anything about going fully digital.
This makes me wonder if this meeting was more of a brainstorming session, or if it's actually officially happening. It seems like the publishing director would (or at least should) be among the first to know about such a sweeping change.
As for the MS Word issue, I imagine journals would continue to use publishing software to make our articles pretty. Before we send an issue to the printer, it is typically formatted as a PDF in almost exactly the same form it takes on the page. It would be very simple to upload these documents instead of sending it to the publisher.
it = them
Two things for the record:
1. The Durham Statement (available here) came from law librarians at a number of top schools, not from the law schools themselves or from law review editors. In fact, editors were not consulted about the statement before its release, which is part of what made it sort of controversial. Some people found the statement's we-know-what's-best-for-you tone patronizing.
2. A number of the top law reviews, including CLR, are separately incorporated 501(c)(3) organizations. They are independent, they have their own budgets, and they make their own decisions. The Durham Statement and the budget decisions of law school administrators matter less to them than to other, university-controlled journals.
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