Paul Caron has a preview of survey results forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review on how student articles editors select pieces for publication.
It’s somewhat hard to know what to make of the preview, because (as I read Paul’s post) Paul is only providing a glimpse of a few results of the survey rather than an overall summary of its findings. Still, the preview is interesting: it suggests that lots of articles editors are influenced by proxies for article quality, such as prior publishing record and the author’s home institution. I trust none of this is surprising to most authors, many of whom have been law review editors themselves. Nonetheless, it will be helpful to have more solid data on these issues.
One important piece missing from the preview is the role of expedited review. My sense is that expedited review can act as an equalizing factor for authors with fewer proxies working in their favor. Articles editors often pay much closer attention if an article has offers from another journal, and (as a general rule) less prestigious journals are less demanding in terms of the proxies they seek. As a result, expedited reviews can be more meritocratic than the process of initial reads. That’s my impression, at least.
Finally, the heavy reliance on proxies by many student articles editors creates a significant opportunity for other editors. The proxies are imperfect, obviously (and some are even weaker than others.) This means that if an editor puts in the work and reads articles carefully, asks for faculty input, and doesn’t rely as much on proxies, she’ll have a good shot at picking up articles that are significantly better than the pieces published by competitor journals.
I have not read the survey. However, the perspective of a former submissions editor of a non-law review journal at a prestigious school:
The greatest non-content advantage an author can create, by far, is to avoid the cyclical nature of the submissions process.
At the peak of the cycle, an overwhelming number of submissions are received. Most unsolicited submissions have the quality of a good student thesis; but are pretty mediocre for a professional. Truly excellent submissions are not difficult to spot, even if I didn’t recognize the name. (I usually didn’t.) A large part of the job is to distinguish (professionally) mediocre article #1 from mediocre article #2.
Different editors take different routes to deal with the time-crunch at the peak of the process, ALL use proxies. (even the “good” ones that enjoy reading submissions.) Some use name-recognition; I didn’t because the few names I was familiar with rarely submitted to our journal. (I suspect that I was not unique in this regard.) Checking with faculty about authors wasn’t an especially efficient way to deal the time crunch, because I could spot an excellent article and there were simply too many authors of (professionally) mediocre articles to inquire about. Sometimes I checked after I had culled the stack to a few articles that seemed an equally “good fit” with our journal.
For a (professionally) mediocre article, an offer was a much more useful proxy than name-recognition, and it is certainly helpful to inform the editor and ask for an expedited review. However, I was personally annoyed at requests for expedited reviews when the author hadn’t yet received an offer. The journal contributed to my worries, and I didn’t appreciate prospective authors of trying to make it bigger.
I found that if you have a (professionally) mediocre article, the best way to capture my interest was to avoid the peak of the submissions cycle. I took the job because I enjoy reading, and at the peak the best I could often do was take a quick skim. I’m sure that I missed out on articles that were eminently publishable, but which had not received an offer. When I received the article earlier (or – I wish – if the author had indicated that s/he would be willing to wait one issue), I (e.g.) ran a westlaw search to take a look at the conversation that the article was attempting to contribute to. (rather than just simply checking to ensure it wasn’t duplicating the existing literature.) Again, I was a “good” editor who enjoyed reading the submissions. The problem wasn’t the level of interest, but the quantity of submissions and the amount of time in which I had to extend an offer. With more time, more careful consideration, less proxies.
Pingback: Crescat Sententia
I recently was chosen as an articles editor for my law review. While my job doesn’t technically include choosing submissions, I was asked to help out with the huge pile accumulating in the office.
The first three articles I looked at went something like this:
1. An article dealing with a current topic that completely dismisses the most recent (and only) case to touch on that topic, without discussing why that case was wrongly decided.
2. An enormous article that reviews every first amendment case I studied in Con Law I, and then never refers to them again in the second half of the article.
3. An article suggesting that we should revisit the current way of looking at a particular topic in IP law, by taking the opposite approach that most courts currently use.
I’ll say that this is the first time I have ever been asked to pick articles for publication, so I was working with little guidance. So, I just figured I would use a bit of common sense. Therefore, I rejected the first and second articles without even looking at the prior publication history and appointments of the authors. These articles were just poorly written and argued, so I really don’t care who wrote them. No offense intended to their authors, but I would honestly have been embarrassed to turn in that quality of work for a course.
In regards to the third article, I must say that it was interesting reading, but I know next to nothing about the subject matter. After reading your post, I may actually look up the author to see what else he has written (nobody told me to do this). But I’m also likely to ask the only professor at this school with knowledge of the subject what he thinks about the topic and what he thinks about the author. As a 2nd year law student, there’s really not much more I can do — especially with 3 boxes full of submissions sitting in the office that also need to be read and analyzed.
The fact that I had some knowledge of the subject matter of the first and second article, but that I know nothing about the third topic skews this discussion. Obviously, I’m more likely to think that an article is “good” when I know nothing about the topic in advance. It’s much easier to convince somebody you’re right if you present a one-sided argument and the reader isn’t aware of the other side. I think this is an inherent flaw in the process, but there’s not much I can do about it.
Pingback: Letters of Marque
As one of the authors of the survey, I just want to clarify that the article is not forthcoming in U. Pa. L. Rev., but, instead, is being written by two outgoing Articles Editors there. It will be circulated for publication next spring.
I think I was somewhat unusual in this, but when I was an articles editor a couple of years ago, I really despised expedites. Not only did they push me to a decision on many articles I’d have preferred to mull over for a while (thus causing me to reject articles I otherwise might have given a second chance), but I found the whole concept an unfortunate reminder of the relentlessly competitive, hierarchial nature of the legal profession. We were a top 10 journal, and we had authors with offers from top 20 journals try to shop up all the time (of course, we also constantly risked losing articles to Harvard and Yale). I think I was probably *less* inclined to give an offer to an article expedited from a school close in rank to ours – after all, that person already had a good offer and their article would surely find an audience, so why rock the boat? It was much more exciting to “discover,” say, an article by a Bigelow fellow or a current clerk that other journals might not have picked up yet. And it was also satisfying to pick an article that I and my board had a particular affinity for, even though it might not be to everyone’s taste.
Now that I’m shopping my own article, however, I must confess that I’ve gotten very good results from the expediting process, so I suspect that my feelings about expedites place me in the minority among articles editors.
As the head articles editor for the law review of a mid-ranked school, here’s what happens as we review articles. Though we’re only a humble school, we get about a thousand submissions in the spring, and a thousand more in the late summer. No, we don’t read them all closely. We can’t. We don’t have the resources.
While it may have been fascinating for your family to hear about your recent promotion from legal writing instructor to adjunct professor, your thoughts about teaching Torts for two semesters will not make a law review article that I’d want to read or publish.
We have space to publish only about eighteen articles each year. Here are a few reasons why we might decline to publish yours:
1) The topic is interesting, the article seems well-researched, but I wish someone else, someone more astute, someone with a feeling for the possibilities and power of English prose, had written it.
2) Too many footnotes. Five-hundred footnotes, most of which are forty-item string cites? No. I’d have a revolt on my hands when it came time to check the citations and Bluebook them.
3) Too few footnotes. Page after page, leavened sparsely by a Supreme Court case or two. You’re not James Ely. Let’s have some evidence for your thesis. Greater minds than yours have likely had something to say here.
4) Too many footnotes that cite your own previous articles, and you’re not James Ely. In fact, you’re still a nobody, with only a few publications to your name, a degree from a nothing-special school, and a non-tenured position at another nothing-special school. Citing your own article(s) several times on every page does nothing to bolster the credibility of your argument. Greater minds than yours have likely had something to say here. What have the courts said about this topic? Statutes on point? Learned treatises? Noted jurisprudes? Don’t give me the impression that you’re just making this all up as you go like some cable television preacher.
5) It’s not written in standard English. Subject-verb agreement is essential. I might have the training to edit your article, but I’m not being paid $45 an hour to do it for you.
6) It’s too theoretical. If you were damaged by spending your formative years in graduate school before you went to trade school to get a J.D., don’t let it show in your article. A little Kant goes a long way in a law review. Likewise, using “heuristics” AND “phenomenological” AND “problematize” in your subtitle will almost certainly send your article toward the “No/Never” pile.
7) Surely professors have mentors. Please ask yours whether your take on domestic violence, critical race theory, the expansion/contraction of Article III jurisdiction, Kelo, or Crawford, is noteworthy, or whether the topic has been flogged to death.
9) A history of mid-19th Century inheritance disputes in a small town, without more, will not do.
10) You have written an op-ed piece (with footnotes that happen to conform to the Bluebook).
11) The title of your article contains a few of our stronger cuss-words. You discuss these words and their kin at length. I attend a state school. How will I defend myself to the dean, who will have to defend himself, the school, and the law review to the media, the governor, and the legislature in an election year? Yes, I have heard of the First Amendment, and I know that Foucault said that liberty is a practice, but my law review is funded by my state’s long-suffering taxpayers. Send your article instead to one of those lovely private law schools, the ones with billon-dollar endowments, where the law reviews can afford to be bold, courageous, and transgressive.
12) A big chunk of your article is a rehash of the work of one of the leading scholars in the field. Yes, I always look through the footnotes to see what you’re citing. Extensive paraphrasing is just lip-synching in print.
13) Your article recounts, at length, and pointlessly, the decisions of various courts on a particular topic. Example: “Several recent circuit decisions indicate a polarizing of judicial opinions about [topic X]. The Eleventh Circuit recently held that…. The case involved a plaintiff who brought a claim under 99 U.S.C. section 9999(z)(9). The court reasoned [ten pages of text, with footnotes that read Id., Id. at 361, Id., Id., Id. at 362, Id., Id., Id. at 363, etc.]. The dissent argued [five pages]. Two years earlier, the Third Circuit, in a similar factual situation, held…. The court reasoned [ten pages]. In a concurring opinion, Judge Y argued [four pages]. The principal dissent argued [five pages]. [And so on.] In conclusion, the circuits have split widely on this issue, and the Supreme Court should decide it as follows [two pages of cursory analysis].”
14) We are a general law review. Your article on a very, very tiny corner of the tax code or an obscurantist element of international law may be brilliant, provocative, and potentially influential, but we are unlikely to have the skill or patience to understand it, appreciate it, or edit it properly. Wouldn’t you be better off at a specialty journal?
15) I have read the first five pages of your article and am not sure what you’re getting at. I read five more pages and still don’t know. Do you have a point? Even if I don’t immediately grasp the subtleties of your argument and I don’t know the topic very well, I am capable of reading expository prose written in English. What is the issue? What are the sub-points? What will I learn by reading the next 25,476 words? Remember, even though we’re just students, your editors all very busy. You just assigned us 60 pages of six-point type in the casebook to read for tomorrow. We don’t have time to dawdle over an article that leads nowhere. Get to the point and stay there.
16) Don’t request expedited review of your article but then refuse to say which law review has already accepted it. I will call your bluff.