This weekend I gave a short presentation on "making your law
journal more marketable" for the Conference of International Law
Journals, meeting here in St. Louis. Thanks to those of you who
responded to my request for suggestions. As I promised, here is
a summary of my presentation.
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Making your international law journal more marketable--
to libraries
For libraries, the key to the usefulness of a journal is
accessibility--that means, make sure it's widely indexed.
If a journal is not indexed, it's ephemera. Newsletters,
intended to be extremely timely and not necessarily kept as
a matter of record, need not be indexed, but academic
journals, in order to be useful resources for research, must
be well indexed for later retrieval.
Law journals should be indexed in, at least, the _Index to
Legal Periodicals_ and the _Legal Resources Index_. In
addition, to reach readers outside of law schools, look at
other indexing services: for instance, the _Boston College
International and Comparative Law Review_ is indexed in ILP,
LRI, PAIS, ABC Pol Sci, American Bibliography of Slavic and
East European Studies, Current Law Index, Legal Contents,
and others.
In addition, try to get your journals included in WESTLAW
and LEXIS's law journal databases. Sure, that means some
people get the articles online rather than from you, but the
key is visibility and developing a reputation; if your
articles repeatedly come up for researchers, your journal
will come to be seen as a valuable resource in international
law.
Indexing means giving away free copies; it's an investment.
We had a law journal business editor some years back who
cancelled the free copies to ILP, PAIS, Shepards, and so on.
That meant, as far as legal researchers at other schools
were concerned, the journal disappeared.
Develop a procedures manual so successive editorial
boards know what the previous practices were.
To make a name for yourself, seek out articles on cutting-edge
issues.
A year ago, a colleague told me of a student who wanted to
write a comment on "environmental racism," but the journal
turned her down--they'd never heard of it. A search of LRI
last week turned up 10 articles. These are the articles
that everybody will site for the next several years.
In addition, I handed out copies of the attached "wish list"
based on Lyonnette Louis-Jacques' message. Several students
asked for extra copies.
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Lyonnette Louis-Jacques' Wish List
for International Law Journals
Post the tables of contents on an appropriate e-mail list or
gopher.
Cover underrepresented topics, countries, orgs, etc., as well as
hot topics.
Include as appendixes or regular section translations of laws and
cases.
Avoid use of odd abbreviations or have an abbreviations table or
always have full titles of abbreviations used at least once
somewhere; have authors provide full titles and/or publishers of
books cited (would make cite checking & reference help easier).
Put contents of issue on outside front cover.
Have cumulative indexes (5, 10-year?)
Have a current events, key documents, new books section or
sections.
Include more bios of people, addresses of organizations, research
guides (since journal will be online, these would be another to
resolve pesky directory & reference questions).
Lyonnette Louis-Jacques, Foreign and International Law
Librarian and Lecturer in Law, University of Chicago
D'Angelo Law Library
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Finally, in the afternoon I gave a presentation on "advanced
publishing techniques" using the Internet. The focus was on e-
mail, both for communicating with authors (especially valuable
for international law journals, where many authors may be
overseas) and for discussion lists and other forms of group
communication. I also showed them some of the research tools in
international law that are available on the Internet, such as the
Fletcher School collection of multilateral treaties, and the
collection of materials on women and the law on the CWRU gopher.
I also talked to them about electronic journals and suggested
that one of them might be the first to publish and electronic law
journal.
One note of warning: I encouraged them to go back home and get
their law librarians to teach them how to use the Internet. So
if you suddenly get a bunch of students knocking on your door,
you have me to blame.
Again, thanks for all your help.
Jim Milles
Head of Computer Services
Saint Louis University Law Library
millesjg@sluvca.slu.edu
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