The process of publishing a law review article usually involves rounds of edits. After the article is accepted, the author will submit the article to begin the editing process. The journal will suggest changes; the author will respond; the journal will suggest more changes; the author will respond, etc. Journal editors and authors alike sometimes wonder, what’s the best number and type of rounds of edits? This is a particularly tricky question for student editors because normally they are only on their journal for two years. Editors learn all about the process and then graduate, leaving them less able to reform practices based on their experience.
Here’s my take. In an ideal world, there could be different procedures for different articles and different authors. But if a one-size-fits-all answer is needed, I think the best approach is to have two-and-a-half rounds of edits. The first round should be the big-picture round. The journal should suggest changes or improvements to the overall argument, flow, and organization of the article. The author should then respond, making changes as necessary. The second round should be the detail round. The journal should suggest changes or improvements to specific sentences, words, and citations. The author should then respond. Finally, I think it’s helpful for the journal to send the author one last quick round as a courtesy just to help look for typos, wrong words, and other objective errors (the last “half” round, as this can be pretty quick).
Some journals do this, and I think it works quite well. One of the keys is to have clear roles for each rounds of editing. Sometimes journals don’t have clear roles for different rounds. Sometimes you’ll just get back-and-forth process that covers the same ground as prior rounds. I think this tends to create more work than is necessary, at only marginal benefit. In my view, the better approach is to dedicate individual rounds of edits to different aspects of the article. That way, once a round is over, that part of the article is settled.
Perhaps the extreme example of the back-and-forth process is the editorial process followed by the Harvard Law Review, at least when I published with them in 2005. The HLR is the most prestigious law review, and if you’re lucky enough to get an offer from them, you take it. But in my experience, the editorial process was completely unlike the process at any other journal. The HLR editors were super smart and worked incredibly hard. But there were six or seven rounds of edits, each quite free ranging in subject and scope, as different editors had a crack at the piece. I was totally exhausted by the end, and there was a lot of wasted effort in the process. By the later rounds, the editors were suggesting changes to changes made by prior editors that themselves had altered changes made by even earlier editors. The edits led to a nicely polished article, and I was happy with it. At the same time, I remember thinking that I could have written an entirely new article just in the time I spend working on the edits to that one.
Anyway, as I said, there is no one perfect way to structure rounds of editing. Different approaches will work better for different authors and different articles. But I’ve personally found the two-and-a-half rounds approach described above works best.
mememe says:
I published science papers without revision (editorial or scientific). This is comparatively rare, but possible. Certainly in academic fields, writing the paper to be as perfect as you can make it in terms of the writing, helps to make the research review go easier (and helps yourself in clarifying the content yourself.) I think this would hold in any science field, including social sciences. It also helps to very honest and direct. (If you dropped a beaker, say so. If your results, would differ with other controls, but you did not test them, say so candidly. Don’t try to be fancy shmancey or cover up problem areas. The direct truth is disarming.)
I would think philosophically any writing is like this, law included. However, I have heard that law is an area where more papers get written than new content. This is not the case in the sciences, where really a lot of stuff that should get published does not, because of grad students giving up or people being disappointed in the results, etc. (Of course this is wastely for the overall field as experiments get repeated.)
March 15, 2010, 1:36 amOrin Kerr says:
mememe,
Law review articles are much longer than science papers, and they rely much more on prior authorities. For a law review article, 55 pages and 250 or so footnotes citing prior authorities is typical. Plus, law reviews have lots of free laborers in the form of student editors….
March 15, 2010, 1:43 amNot My Leg says:
I like my law review’s way of handling it. One department (the same department that accepts the article for publication) is tasked with the big picture edits, and another department is tasked with the detail edits (including checking the substantive accuracy of citations). We try to leave enough time to do at least 2 rounds of edits at each stage, with the hope being we will only need to use one round at each stage. I think two rounds are usually needed at the detail stage though (what do I know, I am in the first department), especially because that is where substantive problems with citations will be found, and fixing those can introduce new citation errors.
Also, articles with really bad substantive citation problems can create some overlap between the big picture edits and the detail edits. If an entire section is unsupported by the citations that starts to look like a big picture problem.
March 15, 2010, 2:21 amTony says:
Are there any good reasons why the law academy isn’t using a peer review system? The fact that the most prestigious review in the country is edited by second and third year law students seems strange.
March 15, 2010, 3:26 amOrin Kerr says:
Tony,
If you google around a bit, you’ll find dozens of good blog posts here and elsewhere on that topic.
March 15, 2010, 3:34 amThief says:
I’m a (new) senior articles editor of a specialist journal, and the 2.5 rounds is what we do already. The first round is substantive edits; we tell the authors that it’s the last chance to add/delete footnotes or pieces of substantive material, unless they have some highly relevant case/statute/news that was released after the editing round closes. The next round is basically restricted to style and compliance editing (Bluebooking, grammar, etc.) Then the author gets one last look at a desktopped version of the article just before it goes to the printer.
Good to know we don’t have to reinvent the wheel!
March 15, 2010, 8:23 amSteve says:
One thing to keep in mind is that law review articles are typically single column with large margins and a large font size and that the footnotes often are “See id” (or similar) and not actually new references.
For contrast, papers in my field are typically between 10 and 15 pages, two columns, narrow margins, a smaller font, and between 20 and 40 unique references. There’s no doubt that law review articles are longer, but the difference isn’t as great as it appears by simply comparing numbers of pages and footnotes.
March 15, 2010, 9:10 amFaceless law review editor says:
Orin, having recently published with them, any thoughts on HLR’s competitor, YLJ?
March 15, 2010, 9:47 amMikhail Koulikov says:
My own understanding and experience has been that two and a half rounds (or rather, two rounds, and then a proof to correct if/as necessary) is the usual practice for most if not all journals in the rest of the social sciences and humanities. It would actually be really interesting to compare whether this is different between “typical” student-edited law reviews and the peer-reviewed legal journals.
March 15, 2010, 10:43 amCurrentEditor says:
To the extent it’s possible, we individualize our editing process based on how we obtained the article. In my experience submitted pieces tend to be well-developed, and require very few “macro level” changes. For these works, we often omit the first “big changes” round and move straight into a writing/grammar edit. Solicited pieces, on the other hand, tend to be less developed. When editing these articles, we generally send them back to the author with some macro-level suggestions.
I think the difference between submitted and solicited articles can be explained by two things: First, my personal experience suggests most authors receive some sort of peer review before they submit their work to the masses. In submitted pieces, the “author bio” footnote often includes a litany of acknowledgements and usually references one or more conferences where the author presented the piece. I think it’s fair to assume this leads to a better rounded article, requiring less in the way of “macro level” changes. In contrast, most “solicited” authors won’t have the time/energy/motivation to gather the same feedback.
Which leads to the second possible explanation: authors who submit a piece have a very strong incentive to make it look as good as possible. When submitting, the author is asking the law review for something–namely, a publication offer. The author greatly improves their chances by making the piece look like it won’t require much effort to publish. Contrast that with solicitation: there, in many ways, it is the law review asking the author for something, so the author has far less incentive to polish the first draft. Instead (and again, in my experience), the author is more likely to rely on the editors to identify and resolve loose ends.
March 15, 2010, 12:33 pmAnonsters says:
And, um, science articles tend to make contributions to the progress of knowledge about the universe, or constituents thereof, whereas law review articles tend to… not.
I vote for “0″ being how many rounds of edits are best. Given what I’ve seen of staffs of law reviews in the D.C.-area (i.e., knowing the people on them), I wouldn’t trust them to edit my grocery list.
March 15, 2010, 2:27 pmLarryA says:
Peer review and editing are two very different stages. Editing should help the author present his or her idea in the most comprehensible way possible, by improving word usage, grammar, organization, and support for the theory presented. Peer review judges whether the idea itself is valid.
I’d think a main factor is that when a journal solicits an article the journal asks the author to write on something the journal thinks is important. The author has to lay aside other work, usually do more basic research, and produce something by a deadline. Authors submitting articles are writing on topics they think are important, using information for which they already know the background, and working at their own pace. It’s easier to “Write what you know.”
Most of the editing I do is either fiction (novels, short stories, anthologies) or journalism (newspaper editorials, magazine articles) so my experience is different. For a novel, first an overview edit of the story arc and plot, then a chapter edit to look at flow and pacing, and finally a line edit for grammar, consistency, punctuation, style, and so forth. So that’s three full edits plus reviews of any portions that had significant changes, as when I have to send a chapter back for a rewrite.
I suspect that law review staffs aren’t really trained as editors.
March 15, 2010, 2:57 pmNot My Leg says:
I don’t know, the last article I edited for a law review had 250 footnotes and over 150 unique references, so make of that what you will.
EDIT – To clarify, I mean it cited to over 150 unique sources.
March 15, 2010, 3:37 pmOrin-fan says:
Orin: I agree completely on the 2.5 rounds of edits.
March 15, 2010, 3:43 pmOrin Kerr says:
Current Editor: Yes, I agree. Whether it’s a good thing or a bad one, a lot of profs are working for the placement: They want the piece to be polished so it will get an offer from a top journal. Symposium pieces fix the placement at the outset, meaning that professors don’t have that incentive. The result is likely to be a less polished piece, at least for a good chunk of the authors out there.
March 15, 2010, 5:01 pmOrin Kerr says:
Faceless,
Are you trying to get me in trouble? ;-) Seriously, though, I had a terrific experience with the YLJ.
March 15, 2010, 5:08 pmAnonsters says:
There’s a lot of monkeys banging on typewriters?
Gotta fill the pages of the University of My Uncle’s Armpit Law Review.
March 15, 2010, 6:36 pmTom says:
Sometimes, this website is fascinating and sometimes it’s a lot of academic navel-gazing.
March 16, 2010, 8:28 am