A reader asks:
Dear Law Review Lara:
I am the just-elected editor-in-chief of the Name Omitted Law Review…. [H]ow could a law review (especially, a Tier 2 law school general review) improve its citation ranking? Related to the first question, two alternative questions: should a law review worry about the citation ranking? Are there any other indicators of how successful a law review is that one could take into account instead?
I have a couple of ideas of how to improve the ranking myself, such as cooperating with the faculty when selecting articles and selecting articles on topics that get cited more than others…. Of course, I will be talking about this issue with the faculty here as well. However, any input from you or volokh.com readership would be very valuable to me (and I believe, others).
I referred the NOLR EIC to my coblogger Randy Barnett’s Beyond the Moot Law Review: A Short Story with a Happy Ending, 70 Chi.-Kent. L. Rev. 123 (1994); Randy says to switch to a symposium format, with articles to be solicited by the faculty editor who’s in charge of that particular issue. But I’d love to hear others’ thoughts, and my anonymous correspondent would, too.