In sum, the reasons why law reviews aren't available for free online:
<questions>
Any one with any knowledge on these topics please respond. Forgive the flood of questions, but I am ignorant on these matters.
What is the relationship between West, Lexis-Nexis(LN) and law reviews? What types of rights do law reviews grant West and LN? Do they usually grant the exclusive right to republish the articles in digital format? What is the nature of the relationship between law reviews and contributors? Must the contributor assign all his rights in a work to the law review? Is that the standard practice?
</questions>
<Cost Prohibition>
For reasons I discuss below, I believe that the cost to law reviews of publishing and maintaining all their content (past and present) is possibly much less than anticipated. But first, I would argue that the cost to us, the end-user of law reviews, is much much higher than it has to be because of the way the content is presently distributed. If law reviews went towards exclusive electronic publication, their publication cost would be dramatically reduced. If a patron wanted a print copy, of course they could get one - at the real cost of publication; this might push the cost of a single paper issue to upwards of hundreds of dollars. But I argue that this is where the price point should be. The goal should be to reach as many people as possible with the content, not to publish to paper.
Also, I believe that many are restricted from the valuable information and insight law reviews provide because we cannot afford to subscribe to 50 journals nor can we afford Westlaw or LN. Sole practitioners and In-house consul of small companies are at a competitive disadvantage to larger firms with deep pockets and access to the virtually unlimited information base that is West and LN. Is this the intent of the authors? To arm the powerful. Restrict the weak? (a little overblown here, I agree ;-)
Judging the success of projects such as http://law.cornell.edu and findlaw.com, I believe that there is a real need for freely available legal information. I use law.cornell.edu every day. Every small practitioner would love to have a similar service when it comes to law review articles. I don't suspect any argument here.
I truly believe that in the aggregate, the real costs to the legal community of utilizing West and LN are <bold>MUCH HIGHER</bold> then the costs of a system based on electronic dissemination of law review content. I have little to no evidence to back such a claim; intuitively I feel it to be true. YMMV. Add all of the costs associated with paper publication and the margin that West and LN extract in digital publication and you have a very expensive system for law review content publication indeed.
The cost of law review content publication and archiving via internet technologies may be much less than anticipated. The idea that cost of teaching law review students to use a Content Management System (CMS) is overly expensive in comparison to teaching law students the vagaries of current print publication systems (word processors, type setting standards, publishing custom and norms) seems to be a little overplayed. With modern Content Management Systems, no one need know more than how to use a mouse and a browser. The cost of entering the data into digital format (or the correct format) might be high, but I prefer to believe that the cost could be minimal. First, most recent publications should be in digital format already. Manual entry of older texts might be expensive; but I think it might be accomplished cost-effectively using undergraduate labor.
The cost of the software could be cost-prohibitive. For example Vignette Content Server (or Broadvision's offering) sometimes approach hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are open source solutions for content management as well (see ArsDigita). My company builds a CMS that we market in the $50,000 price range. I have been given permission to offer my company's content management system to any law school free of charge that wants to archive and publish their law review online for free public access. In reality, the true cost of ownership for any complex software is maintaining the system. That might be expensive, but I argue that such an expense is incremental. Most (if not all) law schools have an extensive IT staff to support the school and library. Adding more duties may add more expense, but I don't think it would make the effort untenable. (Yes, our CMS allows all law reviews using the system to form a central hub (an aggregator) for content access and dissemination)
Concluding. I think that the true cost of print publication and the current system of digital dissemination is extremely expensive and internet dissemination of law review content would be much cheaper in the aggregate. Second, I think the true cost of ownership and operation of a CMS for law review content might be cheaper than suspected giving the availability of open-source solutions not even taking into account my company's willingness to donate our software. Also, the cost of maintaining such a system should be incremental.
<Academic Apathy>
I am not one to preach to the academy. I make no pretension of being an academic so I will make my comments brief. It seems to me that the primary purpose of the Academy is garnering and disseminating knowledge. Through unscrupulous marketing tactics West and LN have throttled the desire of academics and students to seek knowledge elsewhere. Awakening the legal community to an over-cozy relationship with organizations that hinder their fundamental purpose isn't my calling: I have neither the stature nor stamina.
</Academic Apathy>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Mon Mar 26 2007 - 00:35:42 GMT