The Idea of the Law Review: Scholarship, Prestige, and Open Access

Abstract

This Essay was written as part of a Symposium on open access publishing for legal scholarship. It makes the claim that open access publishing models will succeed, or not, to the extent that they account for the existing economy of prestige that drives law reviews and legal scholarship. What may seem like a lot of uncharitable commentary is intended instead as an expression of guarded optimism: Imaginative reuse of some existing tools of scholarly publishing (even by some marginalized members of the prestige economy - or perhaps especially by them) may facilitate the emergence of a viable open access norm.

Keywords: law review, open access, prestige, publishing, scholarship

JEL Classification: K11, L15, L23, L31, L82, L86, O31, O33, O34, Z10