Below are two abstracts published on SSRN dealing with rankings of scholarly production and law schools. Not strictly law review related, but they will no doubt be interesting when published, and the ranking of academic output and the ranking of law schools have considerable impact on the rankings of law reviews. Lawrence Cunningham refers to SSRN's recently added rankings tables of institutions and scholars based on the numbers of articles downloaded from SSRN. This kind of usage data is potentially available on all the larger periodical databases, such as BEPress, HeinOnline, Lexis and Westlaw and suffers from the methodological problem of whether a download is equivalent to a use. Jeffrey Stake, in his law school ranking working paper, discusses misdirection in the US News rankings, saying that "reputation surveys done by US News do not tap into independent professional opinion but instead measure opinions which are influenced by US News". This kind of circularity also impacts law review rankings where many would, a priori, consider the Harvard Journal of Gender to have a higher ranking than the American University Journal of Gender, although the evidence is to the contrary.
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Scholarly Profit Margins and the Legal Scholarship Network: Reflections on the Web
LAWRENCE A. CUNNINGHAM
Boston College (Law School)
Abstract:
Controversy surrounding scholastic rankings arises, in part, because of complexities associated with measuring academic contributions. Legal researchers use various methodologies to assess scholarly production and impact but all suffer from inherent limitations and none provides data useful to scholarly self-reflection. The 10-year old Legal Scholarship Network (LSN) offers potential to improve considerably on both scores of public and personal assessment. This Essay critically evaluates approaches to conceptualizing scholarly profit margins, explores how LSN can enhance these conceptions, and opens new frontiers for this innovative Web-based repository of legal writing.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=695283
The Interplay between Ranking Criteria and Effects: Toward Responsible Rankings
JEFFREY EVANS STAKE
Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington
The law school rankings published by US News and World Report have changed and continue to change the law school world. Are the rankings accurate? Are they changing schools for the better? As measures of educational quality, the US News rankings are seriously flawed. They overweight criteria that matter little, such as bar pass rate. They exclude criteria that matter greatly, such as job satisfaction. Two of the seemingly valid criteria incorporated into the US News rankings are illusory. The reputation surveys done by US News do not tap into independent professional opinion but instead measure opinions which are influenced by US News and, thus, add little reliability to the results that would be reached on other criteria. A more serious problem is the effect of US News rankings on the operation of law schools and students who desire admission. The rankings have created incentives for students who want to be lawyers to go to schools that have grade inflation and take easy courses at those schools. The US News rankings have created incentives for schools to teach to the bar exam, spend money on glossy publications, raise tuition, increase the number of transfer students accepted, and admit students according to their ability to bubble in multiple-choice answer sheets rather than their prospects for contributing to the learning environment at the law school or their prospects for becoming effective and responsible lawyers.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=700862