Academic

Law Review Submissions via LexOpus

By Jacqueline Lipton

Given that we're all blogging about what and when to submit articles in the fall, has anyone given any thought to using LexOpus (W&L's newish submission service)?  It looks interesting and includes a number of international journals - although I haven't checked to see how this list stacks up with Expresso.  I understand that you have two choices on LexOpus as an author: (a) submit exclusive offers to publish to individual journals on a sequential basis; or, (b) invite all journals generally to make offers on the piece.  More details of the submissions process options are here.  If you choose the first option, LexOpus apparently handles the rolling offer process.  Thus, if your first ranked journal doesn't respond or accept the piece within the window of time that the offer to publish is open, the piece is then sent to the next journal you have identified.  If it does accept your offer to publish, there is no expediting because you have made a firm offer that the journal has accepted.  Whilst going through the sequential offer process, it seems that other journals can still make offers to you on the piece.  Additionally, a first ranked journal that has not made an offer within the original offer period is not precluded subsequently from offering to publish the piece, but has no guarantee that you will accept the offer at that point.

This sounds like a really interesting idea, but methinks that the submission process may now be getting too complicated for people who were already having trouble coping with even managing electronic submissions on Expresso, particularly when not all journals are open to receiving articles at the same time and you have to remember to do follow-up submissions for some of them.  I'd be interested in hearing about other people's experiences with the competing electronic services as the season moves forwards.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on August 06, 2009 (boomark / email).