I started submitting articles to law reviews in the summer of 2003, just after I graduated from law school. At the time, it seemed as if most journals only accepted paper submissions, which was cost-prohibitive for many outside of the legal academy. That said, there was a very useful listing of law reviews which accepted Electronic Submissions. That listing, maintained by Rick Bales of Northern Kentucky, is still in existence today. But while that listing still exists today, it now serves a very different function. Now, in essence, it lists journals that still accept e-mail submissions (or submissions via a journal’s website) as opposed to the vast majority of journals, which exclusively accept submissions via ExpressO. Other journals indicate that they still accept e-mail submissions but that they greatly prefer ExpressO submissions.
Started in August 2003, ExpressO allows authors to submit to as many law reviews as they want at one time. The author simply needs to upload a copy of his or her article, a form cover letter, and perhaps a c.v. and abstract. I think the general understanding is that ExpressO has exponentially increased the number of submissions to each law review as authors can now carpet bomb a wide array of law reviews, with law schools often underwriting the costs. Basically, this is similar to the way in which OSCAR has ratcheted up the arms race in the judicial clerkship application process.
Of course, there are definitely some pros to ExpressO. Authors now can submit to a large number of law reviews in a matter of minutes rather than over the course of several days. And authors expediting and withdrawing articles can now do so in the click of a few buttons rather than through individual letters/e-mails/calls. I also assume that ExpressO makes the process easier for law reviews, which is why many journals now only accept ExpressO submissions to the exclusion of e-mail submissions (I wonder why this is the case, though? If an author sends an e-mail submission with a cover letter, abstract, and c.v., how is that different from an ExpressO submission?).
That said, there are cons.
If the general understanding is correct, and the number of submissions to each journal has greatly increased, editorial boards have less time to devote to each article. In my mind, though, the biggest con is the generic nature of the submission process. When I used to submit to law reviews, I would often send targeted letters to law reviews if (1) my article addressed a topic that uniquely impacted the state in which the law review was located; (2) the law review had recently published a good article on a similar topic; (3) the law school was especially known for the field addressed by the article, etc. Even if there wasn’t a particular reason for a journal to publish one of my articles, it still felt good to write a personalized letter to a journal addressed to a specific person. As late as 2008, I was able to send e-mail submissions to many journals, but as I was submitting articles this fall, I found that there simply aren’t many law reviews left in the e-mail game.
It seems as if John Doyle‘s LexOpus is at least in part an attempt to put some personalization back in the law review submission process, but I’m a bit gun shy to try it because I simply haven’t heard from people who have used it (Have any readers had success with it?). It also seems as if the online supplements that many law reviews have added also put some personalization back in the process in addition to having a much shorter window from submission to publication.
So, what do readers think? Did you prefer the personalization of the pre-ExpressO days or do you prefer the efficiency of ExpressO? You can respond by answering the following poll and/or leaving a comment to this post.
-Colin Miller
Posted by Evidence ProfBlogger on September 7, 2010 at 09:19 AM
Comments
I’ve never seen any actual data on this, but the general sense that the use of Expresso results in many more submissions doesn’t surprise me. We’ve had the same experience as SLR that articles emailed directly to us are generally better candidates for publication, so now we give those reading priority.
Posted by: Exec AE | Sep 8, 2010 4:27:17 PM
Dan Filler had an interesting post over at Faculty Lounge in the spring (http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2010/03/peer-review-expresso-and-the-law-review-submission-process.html) recounting his conversation with the Stanford Law Review EIC and its requirement that authors submit directly through their website. The quote that stood out for me was: “After being buried by ExpressO submissions for several years, the editors at SLR realized that virtually every article they’d accepted did not come through ExpressO.”
Posted by: Brian Ray | Sep 7, 2010 10:39:20 PM
Domain name bias may have replaced letterhead bias in the electronic era. I’d like to believe that ExpressO is more egalitarian, but I wonder if the increased volume of submissions means that the journals rely more (not less) on quality proxies.
Posted by: Bridget Crawford | Sep 7, 2010 6:29:27 PM
I would think that ExpressO means that non-professors have less of a disadvantage. Not only was it really expensive to get an article copied, buy envelopes, make labels, and buy postage, but there was the fact that you had to send out an article on non-academic letterhead (or even just your personal home address). The perception at the time was that articles editors would go through the stack and start with the envelopes that had impressive schools as the return address. On the whole, I would guess that ExpressO is more egalilitarian.
Posted by: Orin Kerr | Sep 7, 2010 4:28:26 PM
Many journals that accept ExpressO will also accept submissions by e-mail or through their website, reducing the cost of submitting on one’s own.
Posted by: 2dyearprof | Sep 7, 2010 4:09:02 PM
Anonforever, the old method cost more than $2.00 per journal, given the cost of printing 60 pages of paper, plus first class postage (remember 60 pages of paper weighs well in excess of 1 ounce). If anything, Expresso has made it easier for non-professors to submit.
Posted by: TJ | Sep 7, 2010 3:44:36 PM
What I think is notable is how the Expresso-only submission system which is developing tends to disadvantage authors who are outside the academy – most notably practitioners and those outside traditional appointments at law schools who are forced to bear the multi-hundred dollar costs of submitting to a large number of journals, especially considering the need to submit to more journals due to the general bias against non-professorial submissions.
I think this is problematic both because it serves to increasingly make law review submissions difficult for a large group of authors, and because it threatens to reduce the diversity of viewpoints from which law review articles come from. While I recognize that Expresso is very helpful for journals, I’d urge journals which use it exclusively to reconsider.
Posted by: AnonForever | Sep 7, 2010 2:55:54 PM
Former Articles Editor, how would one do that? I guess that if you were submitting your article to 60 different journls, you could upload the article 60 different times to ExpressO with 60 different cover letters. Is that what you mean? Have you seen authors do that, and how has it been received?
Posted by: Colin Miller | Sep 7, 2010 2:37:02 PM
For the record, personalization is possible through ExpressO, although I suppose the urge to fire it off to as many journals as possible can be irresistible.
Posted by: Former Articles Editor | Sep 7, 2010 2:13:09 PM