The Law Review's Commitment to Open-Access Publishing

Here at the Northwestern University Law Review, we have read with interest the recent discussion concerning the importance of open access publication of legal scholarship.  We wanted to take this opportunity to express our committment to maintaining broad and costless access to the information we publish.

Starting with the fourth issue of our ninety-ninth volume and moving forward, all of our content has been, and will continue to be, available as a PDF download through our past issues tab.  As a result, anyone will be able to find Northwestern University Law Review content using an internet search engine, and download it for free.  Furthermore, we will maintain a fully permissive policy regarding authors who wish to post drafts of their forthcoming articles to SSRN, Bepress or other locations on the web.  That's the easy part.

The hard part is that we are currently sitting on a mountain of information which is not readily convertible to PDF format -- nearly 100 years of scholarship published solely in print in the Law Review.  We are committed to making this information freely available as well.  However, the technical and financial challenges that accompany scanning the mountain of material that was published before PDFs existed make this a project that will be ongoing, and contingent on donated funding.  (For those interested in speeding this process with a donation to the Law Review Fund, please click here for more information.)

Our current plan is to scan and post archival content at a steady rate, working backwards from the most recent issues towards the oldest.  It may take some time before all of our content is open-access, but it is and will remain a key goal for the Law Review.  In the meantime, we hope soon to be able to publish abstracts of our archival content on our site, which will be freely available to all.

We would welcome suggestions as to how we might best accomplish these goals.  As always, thanks for visiting the Colloquy.

Comment Policy

In order to maintain the comments threads on the Colloquy as a safe and productive forum for academic discussion, the Law Review will strictly monitor all comments to ensure compliance with the following standards:

1.  All comments must be worded in a respectful and scholarly fashion.  The Law Review will enforce a zero-tolerance policy against any commenters who employ harrassing or abusive language, employ personal invective in the place of argument, or fail to engage in respectful, appropriate standards of discussion.

2.  All comments must address the substance of the post to which they are responding.

3.  No commenter shall use the Colloquy to promote services or merchandise other than academic work.

4.  All comments must comply with the University's Policy Statements.

5.  All commenters must include a valid e-mail address, and their real name.  No anonymous postings will be permitted.

All comments must be approved by Law Review staff before they will be posted.  The Law Review reserves the right to edit or refuse to publish any comment that we determine, in our discretion, to be a violation of these policies.  Whenever practicable, we will notify a commenter if we choose to edit or delete their comment.  If we determine that any commenter has repeatedly failed to abide by the comment policy, we will cease to approve any comments by that person.  We reserve the right to block IP addresses and take other measures to prevent comment abuse in extreme cases.

Announcing the Northwestern Colloquy

[Last updated on June 24, 2008]

This introduction provides an outline of the Colloquy, an exciting feature of the Northwestern University Law Review that has been operating since November 1st, 2006. The Northwestern Colloquy is one of the first online scholarly publications operated by a major law review. It features legal commentary written in a form that is a hybrid between a print article and a blog post. This format allows scholars to publish their thoughts within weeks of an emerging legal development while maintaining the quality of scholarship expected of a print journal. The subject matter can be anything within the field of legal inquiry, whether a short exposition of a new idea, an analysis of an emerging legal topic, an ongoing debate regarding a legal issue, or a short response to an already published piece of scholarship. As with our print journal, readers can rely upon the Law Review to ensure that citations in these pieces support the assertions made in the essays.

 

For those who wish to publish pieces that straddle the border between the depth and rigor of an article and the speed and brevity of a blog post or an op-ed, the Colloquy publishes short essays, generally no more than 5,000 words, inclusive of footnotes. These essays will be published on the web, and some will also be selected for publication in a print volume of the Law Review. Publishing on the web drastically shortens the amount of time that lapses between the conception of an idea and the possibility of its publication in a major law review from more than a year to less than three months.

 

We also allow readers to comment on Colloquy pieces in a moderated forum. This feature allows an interactive way in which to attract and publish ideas, as well as a meeting place for far-flung scholars to interact and refine their work.

 

If you have questions about the Colloquy, or wish to submit a piece to be considered for publication on the Colloquy, please e-mail the Senior Colloquy Editor. Alternatively, please feel free to ask questions or offer suggestions in the comments.