Posted by Eugene Volokh:
ExpressO:
[DEL: (This post is for authors of law review articles, and for law
review editors.) I used Berkeley Electronic Press's [1]ExpressO
service ([2]FAQ here) to submit my last article, and I was quite happy
with it -- I basically selected the journals I wanted to submit to,
uploaded my paper, my cover letter, and my list of publications, and
they did all the work. There were a few small glitches, but all in all
it went well. And people who don't have secretaries who do the address
location, copying, labeling, and envelope stuffing for them should
find ExpressO indispensable. It's much better to pay $2 per electronic
submission and $6.50 per paper submission than to go through all the
hassle yourself, especially since nonlawprofs should typically submit
to 50-100 journals (at least) to get a good shot at getting accepted.
Plus some schools subsidize their students' ExpressO submissions --
check whether yours does. [3]Kaimi at Tutissima Cassis points out,
however, that several journals cannot be submitted to via ExpressO,
including but not limited to: :DEL]
Alabama Law Review
Cardozo Law Review
Connecticut Law Review
George Mason Law Review
Georgia Law Review
North Carolina Law Review
Notre Dame Law Review
Ohio State Law Journal
Tennessee Law Review
U.C. Davis Law Review
University of Colorado Law Review
University of Miami Law Review
Washington Law Review
This leads me to offer four pieces of advice:
1. As I mentioned above, submit via ExpressO.
2. If you want to be thorough, remember to submit to the above
journals (many of which are in the Top 50) on paper.
3. If you're an editor at one of the above journals, get on the
ExpressO list, or else you're going to lose out on a lot of
submissions. Some people will still submit to you on paper, but
other people will just skip you and submit to the other journals.
The downside is that you'd have to accept electronic submissions;
the ExpressO people tell me that they only do paper submissions to
a few journals, mostly those in the Top 20 but also a few that I
suspect are included for historical reasons. They don't want to do
paper submissions to more journals, even though they charge more
for the paper submissions, because they're short on manpower and
doubt that the extra money will let them hire more people (and I
assume that they don't think it's feasible to hike the paper
submission costs much above the $6.50 to cover those extra costs).
But while accepting electronic submissions can be something of a
hassle (since you'd have to print out copies yourself), it can
also prove to be a benefit, since it might let you organize the
submissions more easily. And more importantly, I think you need to
do that to compete effectively.
4. Finally, if you're an editor at one of the journals that get paper
submissions (Arizona, California, Columbia, Duke, Emory, Florida,
Georgetown, Harvard, Michigan, Minnesota, NYU, Northwestern,
Southern California, Stanford, Texas, UCLA, U Chicago, U
Pennsylvania, U Pittsburgh, Vanderbilt, and William & Mary), also
talk to your people about switching to electronic submissions.
True, you do get the submissions in any event, and few people will
be stymied by the extra $4.50. But you'll get them several days
after your competitors who get electronic submissions. Those
competitors may give offers on some articles -- likely the hottest
ones -- just a day or two after they get those articles
electronically, and before you even get the paper copies in the
mail. That means that when the author tries to shop up to you, you
might not be able to respond quickly enough, and you might thus
end up losing out on a great article. True, some submitters may
adapt to this by using ExpressO to submit to you on paper, and
then using it to submit to the other journals electronically a few
days later, so it lands in everyone's e-mailboxes and mailboxes
simultaneously. But most submitters won't do that; and as a
result, your competitors will steal a march on you. You're law
students, you're law review editors, you're super-competitive, no?
So make sure you're competitive on this.
References
1. http://law.bepress.com/expresso/
2. http://law.bepress.com/expresso/faq.html
3. http://www.tutissima.com/archives/000670.html
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