PURPOSE
LexOpus assists authors and law journals with the submissions process. There is no fee for authors or journals. The system allows an author to submit a work to a number of author-selected law journals. An author may also, or instead, invite offers from any journal by choosing to indicate the work as open to offers. Works may be hidden from public view if the author wishes that. Please note that LexOpus only accepts English language works.
JOURNALS THAT PARTICIPATE
Here is the current list of participating journals (i.e. journals that accept author submissions via LexOpus), and here is the list of non-participating journals. The list of journals that receive open to offers notifications is much longer than the participating journals list and can be found here.
KEY POINTS FOR AN AUTHOR
Journal Category: Journals designate themselves as either, (a) allowing simultaneous submissions, or (b) as requiring an exclusive offer from the author. This is a very important distinction for authors submitting works. Submissions to journals that require an exclusive period must be firm offers from the author. The author many not accept any other journal offer during that journal's exclusive period, and if the exclusive journal accepts the author's offer during the exclusive period then a publishing agreement is formed. With simultaneous-submission journals the author is not making a firm offer, or any offer at all, but rather is asking journals if they would like to make an offer to the author.
Open to Offers: Authors who elect to make their work open to offers are inviting offers from any journals and are free to reject any and all journal offers.
. Simultaneous Submissions: An author can select any number of journals but initially only the first 20 journals selected will be sent submissions
Rejections: As each journal rejects, an additional submission is made, keeping the submission total to 20.
Exceptions: If a journal sees the work in an open to offers list and asks the author for a specific submission, and the author agrees to that, then total submissions will be allowed to temporarily grow above 20. Also, non-responsive journals are not counted toward the 20 (defined as journals submitted to more than 2 weeks previously that have not looked at the work, OR, journals that last accessed the work more than 5 weeks ago, BUT, non-responsive journals cease being ignored if total submissions have reached 40).
Journal listings: Journals have the capacity to see an alphabetical list of journals to which the work is currently submitted (not previous or future journals).
Exclusive Submissions: An author can select any number of exclusive journals but only the first exclusive journal will be sent an offer. As each exclusive journal rejects, the author will be sent an e-mail asking for confirmation that the next exclusive offer should be made. Authors can have both simultaneous submissions and an exclusive offer at the same time but an exclusive offer is a commitment on the author's part to publish with that journal should the journal accept the author's offer. If the exclusive time period for an offer expires then the offer terminates and is converted to a simultaneous submission, the journal can make an offer if it wishes, but the author is free to reject.
Expedites: There is an expedite process in LexOpus. If the author has simultaneous submissions, and has made no exclusive offer, then the author can set a date by which a decision is needed and select which of the submitted journals should receive that expedite message.
Log: Journals do not need to acknowledge receipt of works. LexOpus has a log that shows authors the most recent day that any journal editor looked at the author's work.
WORKS OPEN TO OFFERS
When an author uploads a work the author indicates that the work should, or should not, be open to offers (that decision can be modified later). Making a work open to offers means that journals, on their LexOpus homepage, will see the work listed should one of the subjects of the work intersect with one of the subject interests of the journal. Journals are then able to communicate with the author, make an offer for the work, or remove it from their homepage if not interested. An author might receive publication offers from multiple journals and any publishing agreement would be formed if, and when, the author accepts one of those journal offers. Any unsolicited offer from a journal will lapse after six weeks if the author does not accept or reject the journal's offer. A journal can withdraw an offer at any time prior to its being accepted.
JOURNAL OBLIGATIONS: Journal editors need to be aware that when they make an unsolicited offer to an author via LexOpus (from lists of works open to offers), that this is a contractual offer. If journals wish to negotiate some agreement, such as the need for revisions, this should be negotiated prior to the journal making an offer. Or if the journal is peer-reviewed and wants an exclusive offer from the author, such a transaction should be handled directly by correspondence between journal and author, and might necessitate asking the author to withdraw existing offers to other journals.
UPLOADING A WORK ONLY TO MAKE IT VIEWABLE
An author is free to simply upload a work to make it available for general viewing. There is no obligation to make the work available to journals. Thus journal editors should not search for works in the public view making any assumption that the authors wish to be contacted by journals. For this purpose editors should log in to LexOpus with their journal account and will see "offer" checkboxes next to available works.
MECHANICS
Users who are not logged-in can search for works that are marked by the author as publicly viewable and can view PDF copies. Other features of the site require the user to login at http://LexOpus.wlu.edu.
Authors must login to LexOpus in order to upload a work, or to manage their previously uploaded works. Uploading a new work involves bibliographically describing the work, with details such as author(s), title, abstract, subjects, and author affiliations. The author will need to upload the work and may also upload as separate files a cover letter, resume/CV, and peer-review version of the work (the peer-review version is necessary when the author intends to submit to any peer-reviewed journals). Authors may specify (either at upload time or later), a string of journals to which the work should be submitted, and may later upload revised files, modify the bibliographic data, and add to, or change, the sequence of journals to which the work is being submitted.
Users create login accounts either as individuals (giving them the capacity to upload files and manage files that they own) or may register as journal editors. Anyone registering as an editor will need to establish that they have the right to represent a journal, which is most easily accomplished by LexOpus sending to the journal a link with a verification token. Anyone who requests a journal account should expect some correspondence, and some time delay, in order to verify the individual's right to such an account. A journal may create a number of accounts but, for security reasons, should ideally minimize the number of such login accounts.
JOURNAL HOMEPAGE
The LexOpus homepage for a journal account is divided into a number of sections:
(1) firm exclusive offers from authors (only applicable to exclusive submission journals),
(2) simultaneous submissions (which may occur for exclusive submission journals if the exclusive period for a works expires),
(3) Offers made by the journal (waiting on author acceptance), and
(4) other works open to general offers (limited by subject matter if the journal selected a limiting subject list).
https://lawlib.wlu.edu/lexopus/about.aspx
No comments:
Post a Comment