Advice to Law Journals, Part 18

18   publish your journal with open access on the web as well as in print. 

Just as journals should do everything possible to get content, they should do everything possible to facilitate distribution of that content.  This includes encouraging authors to post their articles on ssrn and bepress before publication.  I've heard some journals don't want to let authors post their articles on the web before the articles are published--or even after they're published.  To use a colloquial term, that's nuts.  Journals need to get scholarship into the hands (or before the eyes) of readers.

Endnote: The image of the Free Library of Philadelphia, from our friends at wikipedia, is supposed to illustrate making knowledge available in lots of ways at no cost.  Spent a lot of hours there when I was an undergraduate and some hours in more recent years when I was working in Philadelphia.  Not sure it's the best image for that--I wanted to use a picture of the new Alexandria Library, but couldn't find a decent one in the public domain.

Alfred L. Brophy
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