The Volokh Conspiracy - Soliciting Feedback on My <i>Nonlethal Self-Defense, Stun Guns, and the Rights To Keep and Bear Arms, Defend Life, and Practice Religion</i>:

I'm planning on posting excerpts from this new article of mine next week or the week after that, and I'll also link to a PDF version. It's forthcoming in the Stanford Law Review in several months, and I wanted to get as much feedback as possible.

But before that, I thought I might ask for a bit of feedback from a narrow class of people: If you read the article as a law review editor a few weeks ago, when I was circulating it for submission, and feel you can pass along any reactions you had, I'd very much like to hear them.

My sense is that there's a lot of evaluative work that's done by articles editors but that's then lost as a source of feedback to authors. That certainly makes sense in the initial submission process; explaining to authors why an article was rejected, or coupling an offer with an explanation of the article's weaknesses, can take up a lot of time and cause a lot of friction. But I thought that if I expressly asked, perhaps some people could feel comfortable passing along their reactions, and those reactions could be helpful to me in improving my piece. I can think of all sorts of eminently legitimate reasons why a journal might not have been interested in the article, but my goal is to find flaws or unnecessary limitations that I haven't thought of myself, but that others have noticed.

Naturally, please don't say anything if you feel that this would compromise internal journal confidences, and if you'd prefer to respond anonymously (to conceal either your name or the name of the journal) or privately to my volokh at law.ucla.edu address, that would be just fine. But I don't see any ethical problems with passing along -- especially anonymously -- your own individual reactions, or the reactions of colleagues who agree to include them. And because this message is posted publicly rather than e-mailed directly to a journal, I don't think you need to worry about setting a work-creating precedent that you'd have to adhere to for dozens of future articles; even if others start posting such requests, you can respond when and only when you are so inclined.

Finally, just to be extra clear: As you might gather, I'm delighted by the offers that I received for the piece, and of course I'm thrilled to be publishing the article where I'm publishing it. And as I noted, I entirely understand why other journals weren't interested in the piece, both for general reasons (there's always a mix of reactions from different people), and for specific ones having to do with this article. My goal is very simple: I just want as much helpful feedback as possible. Many thanks!

	[Eugene Volokh, April 7, 2009 at 8:32am] Trackbacks Soliciting Feedback on My Nonlethal Self-Defense, Stun Guns, and the Rights To Keep and Bear Arms, Defend Life, and Practice Religion: I'm planning on posting excerpts from this new article of mine next week or the week after that, and I'll also link to a PDF version. It's forthcoming in the Stanford Law Review in several months, and I wanted to get as much feedback as possible. But before that, I thought I might ask for a bit of feedback from a narrow class of people: If you read the article as a law review editor a few weeks ago, when I was circulating it for submission, and feel you can pass along any reactions you had, I'd very much like to hear them. My sense is that there's a lot of evaluative work that's done by articles editors but that's then lost as a source of feedback to authors. That certainly makes sense in the initial submission process; explaining to authors why an article was rejected, or coupling an offer with an explanation of the article's weaknesses, can take up a lot of time and cause a lot of friction. But I thought that if I expressly asked, perhaps some people could feel comfortable passing along their reactions, and those reactions could be helpful to me in improving my piece. I can think of all sorts of eminently legitimate reasons why a journal might not have been interested in the article, but my goal is to find flaws or unnecessary limitations that I haven't thought of myself, but that others have noticed. Naturally, please don't say anything if you feel that this would compromise internal journal confidences, and if you'd prefer to respond anonymously (to conceal either your name or the name of the journal) or privately to my volokh at law.ucla.edu address, that would be just fine. But I don't see any ethical problems with passing along -- especially anonymously -- your own individual reactions, or the reactions of colleagues who agree to include them. And because this message is posted publicly rather than e-mailed directly to a journal, I don't think you need to worry about setting a work-creating precedent that you'd have to adhere to for dozens of future articles; even if others start posting such requests, you can respond when and only when you are so inclined. Finally, just to be extra clear: As you might gather, I'm delighted by the offers that I received for the piece, and of course I'm thrilled to be publishing the article where I'm publishing it. And as I noted, I entirely understand why other journals weren't interested in the piece, both for general reasons (there's always a mix of reactions from different people), and for specific ones having to do with this article. My goal is very simple: I just want as much helpful feedback as possible. Many thanks!