Taylor & Francis

So, another update about my recent acceptance to Law & Literature, especially now that I've gone through their publishing agreement.

The journal itself, as I mentioned, seems like a good venue for me -- reputable editors, a very professional and rigorous peer review process, and strong articles in prior issues of the journal. But the  publishing agreement for Taylor & Francis (the publishing house for Law & Literature) also raised some . . . . let's call them worries, or at least questions, about accessibility. Exacerbating my worries, too, is the fact that I'm a humanities person. As far as academic publishing for the sciences and social sciences goes, I know very few good things about it, and it's quite strange for me to publish in a journal I've never actually consulted for my own research.

So, I did some googling. Here's what I found:
  • Subscription services for Taylor & Francis tend to be very expensive, and thus many libraries don't carry their journals . . . especially as these journals general lack the impact factor of Elvesier journals. That explains my own U of A library has only a selection of issues from Law & Literature.
  • Likewise, T & F has relatively few humanities journals . . . which means that humanities scholars rarely consult these articles for their own research. That also explains why I'd never encountered L&L before.
  • And, while T & F journals do permit gold open access publishing, you have to pay an APC of almost $3000. Most social scientists can simply use grant money for this, but obviously that doesn't apply to me.
Still, L & L is indexed in the MLA International Bibliography, and I'm allowed to publish a postprint version of my article after an 18 month embargo. That partly alleviates issues of access. I'll also get 50 "free" online copies of my article to distribute to friends, colleagues, and whatnot. My enthusiasm, however, I admit is a bit dampened by all this . . . but still, given the previous publishing travails of my article, my hesitations aren't enough to make me seriously consider withdrawing the article. Also, I strongly believe in my ideas expressed by the piece, which helps. I'm just slightly less excited about the publication than before, is all.

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