In late November 2005 I sent a proposal, reproduced below, to a number of U.S. legal periodicals to see what enthusiasm there might be for limiting simultaneous submissions. As of late December the response has been minimal, and that negative. The fundamental argument against limiting the number of simultaneous submissions being the fear that a deluge of articles might become a dearth of articles, particularly for a specialized or a low-ranked journal.
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Proposal on Simultaneous Submissions
I am sending this proposal to twenty journals to see what enthusiasm there is, in principle, for the idea of curbing simultaneous article submissions. It's socially wasteful for authors to be sending articles to fifty or a hundred journals for simultaneous consideration, and I believe the time is ripe for placing some constraint on that process.
I'm sure you are aware that most non-U.S. law journals, contrary to the situation in the U.S., require exclusive submission. Moving to such a position would be extreme. I would like to advocate that U.S. law journals move to a limit of (let us say) six simultaneous submissions. The advantages are quite obvious. Authors would need to assess what journals would realistically accept their article, and such restraint would allow each journal more energy to better evaluate and process their submissions.
The main objection is one of competition. It's necessary for the majority of your peer journals to move in that direction too. So the purpose of this initial proposal is to test your reaction, to see if anyone has ideas or objections, and to ask what you think would be a reasonable suggested limit on the number of simultaneous submissions.
Should there be enough positive response, my thought on process is that I will send a proposal to forty law journals, and with a reasonable response from that group to send on the proposal to another forty journals informing them of the response to that date. Continuing then through all the journals, and starting on one or more additional complete rounds of the journals, each time with a larger list of interested journals. If well received, I'm hopeful this process of tentative commitment could be accomplished by the end of March, with firm commitments before summer 2005, and an implementation date by the end of summer 2005.
The Cato Supreme Court Review (2001-2002-- ) has been added to the list of legal periodicals at law.wlu.edu/library/research/lawrevs/mostcited.asp.
I've added an immediacy index to the list of journals at http://law.wlu.edu/library/research/lawrevs/mostcited.asp (click on the column header labeled "Immediacy 2003" to sort the journals). As of mid-December the Immediacy Index is a bit of an experiment. The figures are based on the number of articles citing each journal's articles dated 2003, where the citing articles are themselves dated 2003. The calculation is made for each journal by dividing the number of citing articles from 2003 by the number of articles that the cited journal published in 2003. This is a method for comparing how rapidly the average article in a particular journal will be discovered and cited. To date, only U.S. general and most of the U.S. specialized journals have been included. Note that the ranking has a bias against journals that publish more of their articles toward the end of the year. Note also that the numbers of articles are generally low, so if for example a journal only published 6 articles in 2003, but had one successful article that was cited in 30 articles, then the journal would come out on top of the immediacy index on the strength of just that one article. Methodologically these immediacy index figures have the same weakness as those for the other rankings - citations to articles may have been missed if non-standard citations were used, and counts of articles published (as reported by ILP, Westlaw, or Lexis) are not always consistent or reliable.
Some may be interested in seeing the results of an "immediacy index" test of the top 10 journals (by impact factor). This is looking at the number of cites from articles (in the JLR database) dated 2003 that cite to articles published in each journal where the cited article is also dated 2003. In other words it's a look at how rapidly articles from these journals become known and cited.
Harvard, closely followed by Columbia, sizeably leads the group.
| Impact Factor | 2003 articles cited by end of 2003 | No. of 2003 articles in Law Rev. | Immediacy Index (cites/arts) | |
| Yale Law Journal | 11.6 | 112 | 76 | 1.5 |
| Columbia Law Rev. | 11 | 97 | 52 | 1.9 |
| Virginia Law Rev. | 11 | 60 | 36 | 1.7 |
| N.Y.U. Law Rev. | 10.8 | 43 | 37 | 1.2 |
| Stanford Law Rev. | 10.8 | 73 | 58 | 1.3 |
| Cornell Law Rev. | 10.5 | 55 | 46 | 1.2 |
| Harvard Law Rev. | 10.3 | 160 | 82 | 2.0 |
| UCLA Law Rev. | 9.4 | 36 | 33 | 1.1 |
| Minnesota Law Rev. | 8.5 | 58 | 53 | 1.1 |
| U. of Penn. Law Rev. | 8.4 | 54 | 64 | 0.8 |
This is an example of a search in the JLR database:
text(55 56 +1 (stan stanford +2 "l.rev." "l.r." (l +1 rev review) (law +2 rev review)) ("stan.l.rev.") "stanford.l.rev." +6 2003) & DA(2003)
The International Business Lawyer (published by the International Bar Association, London) ceased publication at the end of 2004.
Changed name from Biz Law Journal to U.C. Davis Business Law Journal. Early issues of journal said to cite as, "1 BizLaw J. 7 (2001)", now the journal says to cite all articles in the form of, "4 U.C. Davis Bus. L.J. 7 (2004)"
Erasmus Law and Economics Review (2003-) [online] (Italy), and Rutgers Journal of Law and Urban Policy (2003- ) [online] have been added to the list of legal periodicals at law.wlu.edu/library/research/lawrevs/mostcited.asp.