When deciding where to publish your work, you may wish to take the following considerations into account:
Publishing Timelines While many law journals accept submissions year-round, others have designated submission periods. According to Scholastica data on law reviews, the majority of articles are submitted between February-March and August-September. For the most accurate information regarding submission timelines, consult individual journal websites.
Scope and Submission GuidelinesIn addition to consulting a journal's website for a call for papers, topical focus areas, and editorial guidelines, browsing recent issues of the journal may help you to determine whether your work would be a good fit. You may also wish to consider whether the journal accepts submissions via email, mail, and/or Scholastica.
Journal QualityA variety of proxy measures of journal quality have been developed to assist researchers in deciding where to submit their work. However, there is no perfect mechanism for ranking scholarly publications. The Journal Rankings tab provides more detailed information about various journal lists and metrics.
IndexingYou may wish to check whether a specific journal is indexed in key resources such as HeinOnline, LexisNexis, Westlaw, LegalTrac, and the Current Index to Legal Periodicals. Additional journal indices can be found through the Law Library's e-resource page.
Open Access
Another consideration is whether a journal makes content freely accessible online, which studies have found leads to a citation advantage over publishing in subscription-based journals. To determine whether a journal is open access, consult the copyright policies on the journal 's website, or try searching for the journal in the Directory of Open Access Journals and/or SHERPA/RoMEO, which aggregates copyright policies. Note that if a journal does not make content openly accessible, you may still be able to self-archive a version of your work in the University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository as well as platforms such as SSRN.
Washington & Lee's Law Journal Rankings can be sorted by subject, country, and name. It is maintained by the Law Library at the Washington & Lee Law School.
Law Journals Index is an annotated list of journals maintained by Washburn University School of Law.
Law Review Commons lists open access journals in Digital Commons repositories.
Law Review Companions lists online companions to U.S. law journals and is maintained by librarians at eight law schools.
Rostron, Allen K. and Nancy Levit. Information for Submitting Articles to Law Reviews & Journals. SSRN (updated annually).
Galle, Brian. "The Law Review Submission Process: A Guide for (and by) the Perplexed." Medium (August 12, 2016).
If you have any questions or would like additional information about the resources discussed in this guide, please contact Sarah Woloschuk at swolosch@umich.edu.
