Submitting a Law Review Article about Wrap Contracts through a Wrap Contract

I‘ve been away from the submission process for a few years.  In the meantime, Scholastica has entered the picture, which from an author’s view is simply an expensive headache, and more journals are encouraging authors to submit directly through either e-mail or their own online submissions process. 

Having been a historian before becoming a law professor, I am still grateful for the advantages of student-edited law journals and authors’ ability to submit to scores of journals simultaneously.  I still believe that this process is better for authors and not significantly less arbitrary that double-blind peer review.  Lots of scholarship gets published that does not end up getting used or cited under both systems, but the peer review process banishes lots of possibly meritorious scholarship to the dung-heap of history based on the opinions of two people whose reasoning might be insufficient to justify such a heavy penalty.

That said, I do find a new feature of online submission processes disquieting.  At least one journal that encourages authors to submit through their online submission form features a Submission Agreement that includes a link to a separate page containing the journal’s “attribution and usage policies.”  The latter are incorporated by reference, and thus one must agree to them in advance before submitting the article.  There is nothing particularly onerous in the Submission Agreement or the usage policies, but the problem is that authors submit to dozens or scores of journals.  The journals cannot really expect authors (or their administrative assistants who submit on their behalves) to read through boilerplate terms.  So there we have it — forms that purport to bind law professors to terms to which they have not meaningfully consented.  This is especially ironic if, like me, you have been writing about the dangers of form contracts and the degraded version of “consent” in this context. 

The practice is especially irksome as the submission process does not otherwise involve a contract.  When I submit my article to multiple journals for publication, I am submitting an invitation for offers.  I have no obligation to the journals, and they have no obligation to me.  They don’t even have to read my piece before rejecting it, nor do they have to respond in any way to me.  And if they do offer to accept my piece (which, note, is typically described as an “offer to publish” not as an “acceptance”), I can reject that offer and go merrily on my way.  

The introduction of form contracts at the submission state —  a point at which the parties have no legal relationship — is simply unnecessary.