Library Faculty Services
Research Support

Faculty Research Databases
Curriculum Support
Current Awareness Services
Submitting Law Review Articles
Law School & Law Review Rankings
Call for Papers, Conferences, Symposia
Copyright & Publisher Information







Mercer University Faculty Handbook revised for 2009
Walter F. George School of Law Faculty Operating Guidelines & Procedures
AALS Directory of Law Teachers available on HeinOnline

Faculty Research Databases

Faculty can access most of the law library's subscription resources when they are away from the law school.  If they do not use the VPN, they need their Mercer University ID number (MUID).  That’s the 8-digit number on the front of their Bearcard.  When they select a subscription resource, they are prompted to enter their name and ID number.

For assistance, please contact your librarian liaison.

BNA ALL Subject arrangement of BNA Titles Alphabetical arrangement of BNA Titles	BNA ALL provides access to over 100 BNA reports and newsletters. Faculty can sign up for email delivery of BNA Highlights, but should sign up on campus because registration is IP authenticated. If you do not have the virtual network at a remote location, you will need a password to access the full text of items linked in a BNA Highlight. Contact your librarian liaison or the Reference Desk (301- 2334) for the password.
CALI Legal Education Commons	Faculty and librarians from CALI member schools can upload materials under a Creative Commons license that allows colleagues to find and share legal education materials (syllabi, podcasts, presentations, etc.)
CALI Lessons	Collection of over 625 interactive tutorials in 32 areas of law. The first time you visit the site, you must register using Mercer's authorization code. Contact your librarian liaison or the Reference Desk (301-2334) for the code. Create your own password. Once registered, access CALI with your email and your password and click on "Login."
Casemaker	Georgia cases and other primary sources freely available to Georgia state bar members. Mercer law faculty have access to this expanding legal research service. Please contact your librarian liaison or the Reference Desk (301-2334) for the Mercer bar number and password.
Chronicle of Higher Education	Password protected for faculty use. Contact your librarian liaison or the Reference Desk (301-2334) for the authorization code.
CIS Lexis Congressional	Includes federal legislative history materials, bills, bill tracking, public laws, federal regulations, and information about members of Congress.
CQ Guide to Congress	Table of Contents include: Origins and Development of Congress Powers of Congress Congressional Procedures Pressures on Congress Housing and Support Pay and Prerequisites Congress and the Electorate Qualifications and Conduct Data and Documents
CQ Researcher Online	Provides in-depth and up-to-date coverage of today's most important and controversial topics, including social, economic, political and environmental issues.
Congressional Research Service Reports (CRS)	An online archive provided by the University of North Texas Libraries of many searchable, full-text CRS reports that have been available on a variety of different websites since 1990. Includes subject access. The Open CRS Network, a project of the Center for Democracy & Technology, also provides convenient access to many CRS reports that are already in the public domain. A comprehensive list of CRS reports related to IP, Commerce and Technology are purchased from Penny Hill Press and provided for free at Franklin Pierce Law Center. An additional source for free and fee based reports is available form LLSDC.
Current Index to Legal Periodicals - CILP	CILP provides topical access to the most recent issues of over 475 law reviews and legal journals. It provides the full table of contents of all journals indexed. A major advantage to using CILP is that it is available 4-6 days earlier than other commercial legal periodical indexes. It is available in HTML, PDF or Word format. The HTML version allows a direct link to the cited articles in full text on Westlaw and Lexis. See SmartCILP instructions if you wish to receive, via e-mail delivery, a weekly citation list of new scholarship in your areas of interest.
eBrary	eBrary provides access to over 30,000 electronic versions of printed books.
Environmental Law Reporter	Court opinions, news, analyses, policies & decisions, pleadings, environmental statutes & treaties.
Fulton County Daily Report	Current reports plus an archive back to January 2002.
Federal Resources	Extensive collection of federal online resources from Mercer Law Library.
Galileo	A statewide resource which offers hundreds of academically-oriented databases. Includes access to full text articles from various disciplines through Academic Search Premier (at EBSCO host) and ProQuest. Use the A - Z directory on Galileo's home page to find these two databases. Other resources include encyclopedias, business directories, government publications, and reference sources. Contact your librarian liaison or the Reference Desk (301-2334), to obtain the password for full remote access.
Georgia Resources	Extensive collection of Georgia online resources from Mercer Law Library.
HeinOnline	Retrospective digitized images of full text coverage for over 800 legal journals. Many now have current coverage. Check here before requesting off site retrieval of older law review articles. Coverage also includes digitized images of the following:   Federal Register (vol. 1, 1936 -) Code of Federal Regulations - Coverage: 1938-2008 (1994-1995 currently includes only Title 37); There were no CFR supplements published for 1942 and 1948. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents (vol. 1, 1965 -) Treaties and Agreements Library Foreign Relations of the United States Foreign and International Law Resources European Center for Minority Issues U.S. Supreme Court Library U.S. Attorney General Opinions U.S. Presidential Library Legal Classics Library Federal Legislative History Collection State Session Laws Statutes at Large (1789-2006) English Reports American Law Institute Philip C. Jessup Library National Moot Court Competition Subject Compilation of State Laws U.S. Federal Agency Library World Trials Library Association of American Law Schools United States Code National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform Laws Taxation and Economic Reform in America: A Historical Archive 1781-2009
Index to Legal Periodicals 1908- present u ILP Retrospective 1908 - 1981 u ILP Full-Text 1982 - present	Index to Legal Periodicals indexes articles from over 1,000 legal periodicals published in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Annual surveys of the laws of a jurisdiction, annual surveys of the federal courts, yearbooks, annual institutes, and annual reviews of the work in a given field or on a given topic are also covered. Full-text of 326 selected journals back to 1994 is included. More than 1400 books are indexed annually. Researchers can search the ILP Retrospective 1908-1981 and the ILP Full-Text 1982 - present at the same time or separately.
IndexMaster	IndexMaster is a searchable database of the indices and/or tables of contents of thousands of legal titles from a variety of legal publishers, including ALI-ABA, Kluwer, Lexis, West, etc.
Issues in Legal Scholarship	Provides a forum for discusson of seminal articles and important issues in legal scholarship, available through Berkeley Electronic Press.
Jurist	Academic gateway to legal instruction and scholarship online.
JStor Arts & Sciences	An archival, multi-disciplinary full text source for scholarly journals.
Law Professor Blogs Network	Law Professor Blogs, sponsored by Foundation Press and Thompson West, is a network of blogs designed to assist law professors in their scholarship and teaching. An additional blog, PrawfsBlawg, is sponsored by Aspen. RSS feeds are available on both these blog sites, and both are searchable by keyword. For a list of moderated listservs for law professors, and additional links to blogs and news services, see News Sources, Blogs & Listservs on law library's Current Awareness web page.
Legal Scholarship Network(LSN)	Legal Scholarship Network (LSN) is a division of the Social Science Research Network. LSN publishes electronic journals consisting of working and accepted papers, author contact information, and conference announcements.
Lexis	LexisNexis online legal research service for faculty and students.
LexisNexis Web Course System	Description on how to set up a LexisNexis Web Course system through Mercer Curriculum Support web page.
LLMC Digital	Full-text historical and current materials from the U.S. federal legislative, executive and judicial branches as well as Canadian materials (gaps in coverage). Also includes an extensive collection of both primary and secondary military law materials.
Medical Literature on the Internet	Excellect guide on researching medical literature on the Internet, including PubMed, National Library of Medicine Gateway (NLM), MEDLINEplus, Medscape, a state medical board directory and directory of licensing agencies.
MEDLINEplus	Free online access to medical resources.
Oxford English Dictionary Online	The Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language since 1150. OED is an historical dictionary, and its entry structure is very different from that of a dictionary of current English. In dictionaries of current English, in which only present day definitions are covered, the most common meanings are described first. For each word in the OED, both online and in print, the various groupings of meanings are dealt with in chronological order according to the quotation evidence. Thus, it traces the usage of words through quotations from a wide range of international English language sources, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books. Search tip: When you have the entry for a word, at the top of the page there are buttons for pronunciation, spellings, etymology, quotations and date charts.
PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records)	PACER provides access to case and docket information for Federal Appellate, District and Bankruptcy courts. Contact your librarian liaison or the Reference Desk (301-2334) for the password.
RIA Checkpoint	Full-text tax and accounting materials, including the complete federal tax code, regulations, committee reports, and rulings. Also contains the Federal Tax Coordinator, U.S. Tax Reporter, Federal Tax Handbook, a news/current awareness section, as well as state tax cases, rulings, and legislation.
Tarver Library A - Z eJournal Locator	The "A-Z eJournal Locator" on Mercer University Tarver Library's home page is a single source online locator which finds all the inter-disciplinary journals available through the University Library's various databases.
The Law Teacher	Published twice a year by the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning, which is co-sponsored by the law schools at Gonzaga University and Washburn University.
Theoretical Inquiries in Law	Specializes in the application to legal problems of insights developed in other disciplines, such as moral and political theory, cognitive psychology, epistemology, economics, and probability theory. Available through Berkeley Electronic Press.
TWEN	Description on how to set up Westlaw TWEN through Mercer Law Curriculum Support web page.
UN Treaty Collection	Includes the full-text database United Nations Treaty Series and is searchable by subject, name, date, or parties.
U.S. Law Week (BNA)	Full-text articles, cases, and other supporting legal documents covering significant cases and key legislative/regulatory and pre-decisional developments. This database also contains a link to Surpeme Court Today, which provides daily updates, allowing users to view the status of and search summaries of certiorari petitions filed since the 1995 October Term. The database also contains the full text of Supreme Court opinions, oral argument schedules, selected oral argument summaries, annual reviews of the Court's decisions, and more. To sign up for BNA Highlights E-Mail alerts, click here and select "BNA news service" link. Additional e-mail delivery and alerts for pending and recently decided U.S. Supreme Court cases are listed on the law library's Faculty Current Awareness web page.
Web of Science	An index of more than 8,000 science, social sciences, arts, and humanities journals, with complete bibliographic data, abstracts, and cited references. Includes the Science Citation Index Expanded.
Westlaw	Westlaw online legal research service for faculty and students.
WorldCat	Online catalog of library holdings nationwide, available through Galileo.

Submitting Law Review Articles

Legal Scholarship Network

Legal Scholarship Network (part of the Social Science Electronic Publishing Network) is a free service that allows you to submit a paper to over 300 law reviews that allow electronic submission. You can send customized messages to each journal, and to submit to different journals at different times. To use eSubmission, you must first include your paper in the SSRN elibrary.

ExpressO

Berkeley Electronic Press provides electronic submission of articles to over 550 law reviews. The law school has an institutional account.  The first time you use ExpressO, select Start Your Submission and Create a Free Account using your law school email address.  Instructions for getting started are here:  http://law.bepress.com/expresso/how_to_get_started.html

Notes:
ExpressO provides FAQ about the submission process.
ExpressO provides a list of law reviews that are temporarily full and not accepting submissions.
ExpressO 2007 survey of legal scholars who used the submission service in 2006.
ExpressO 2006 Top 100 Law Reviews.



LexOpus from working papers to published works

LexOpus is a free online law journal submissions system at Washington and Lee Law School offering two services to authors: 1) Authors can make their articles available to all interested law journals, inviting journals to make offers. Journals are able to limit by subject matter the articles that they see as open to offers. 2) Authors can make offers to a specific list of law journals. For non-peer-reviewed journals "short term" is one week.  Author offers continue past each journal's exclusive period, on a non-exclusive basis, until rejected by the journal or withdrawn by the author, but any journal with an exclusive period always has acceptance priority. Authors can choose to both make a work "open to offers" and also to submit to specific journals, or do one or the other. As the system does permit uploading of revisions authors might make working papers open to offers and then, if no acceptable offers have been received, when the finished work is available submit that version to specific law journals. Authors can suppress their work from public view if that's desired.

Website created and maintained by John Doyle, Associate Law Librarian at Washington and Lee Law School Library.

Law Journal Information

The basic purpose of this site is to allow authors to find journals by subject, country, or journal rank (where available). Website created and maintained by John Doyle, Associate Law Librarian at Washington and Lee Law School Library.



Article Providing Information for Submitting Articles to Law Reviews and Journals
Article update by Nancy Levit and Allen Rostron on law review submissions/expedites and law review rankings from different sources for the summer and fall submission season.  The first chart contains information about each journal’s preferences about methods for submitting articles (e.g., e-mail, ExpressO or regular mail), as well as special formatting requirements and how to request an expedited review.  The second chart contains rankings information from U.S. News and World Report as well as data from Washington & Lee’s law review website.


Emory Law School's Chart on Current Law Review Article Length Limits and Preferences for the top 35 most cited general U.S. legal periodicals.

Law Library of Congress Law Reviews Online

Only electronic law journals and other periodicals providing substantial amounts of legal analysis are included. Listings include those sites offering free and complete access to the full text of articles and notes. Journals which offer only promotional information, tables of contents, or abstracts are omitted.


Electronic Submission of Law Reviews (Chase College of Law)

Provides a list of law reviews which accept electronic submissions. Site also enables email submissions to multiple law reviews.

NELLCO Legal Scholarship Repository

The NELLCO Legal Scholarship Repository provides a free and persistent point of access for working papers, reports, lecture series, workshop presentations, and other scholarship created by faculty at NELLCO member schools. Powered by Berkeley Electronic Press technology, the aim of the NELLCO Legal Scholarship Repository is to improve dissemination and visibility of a variety of scholarly materials throughout the academic and legal research communities.




Bepress Legal Repository

Website from Berkeley Electronic Press which posts working papers and other materials from law schools, institutes, research centers, conferences and think tanks. Law schools can set up a collection of working paper series to be posted on this site for a fee. Mercer Law School has an insitutional account.

Jurist Legal Intelligence - Law Reviews

Jurist includes submission information, tables of contents and more.

LexisNexis Directory of Law Reviews and Scholarly Legal Periodicals

A comprehensive listing of law reviews and legal periodicals compiled by Professor Michael H. Hoffheimer, University of Mississippi. The site also includes a directory of University Presses. In addition, articles about law reviews are located under the "Sources" link.


Concurring Opinions provides occassional articles discussing law reviews.


Tips on Publishing from Columbia Law School.


Google Scholar - Search for scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Tips on conducting an advanced search.



Google Book Search - Search and preview millions of books from libraries and publishers worldwide using Google Book Search. Tips on conducting an Advanced Search.

Findlaw's Directory of Law Reviews

Law School & Law Review Rankings

U.S. News & World Report Law School Rankings 2009
Analysis of biggest moves in U.S. News Report Law School Rankings 2007 - By Tax Prof Blog.

Journal Rankings - Washington and Lee's Journal Rankings is a database which counted citations to journals in two large Westlaw databases: JLR (primarily U.S. journal and law reviews) and ALLCASES (U.S. federal and state cases). Faculty may choose to view the list arranged by journal title or by ranking.


100 Most Popular General Student Law Reviews and Top Law Reviews within the Most Popular Subjects from Berkeley Electronic Press's ExpressO are rankings based on how many articles were submitted to each journal through their online submission service.

Leiter's Law School Rankings Website

Designed as an alternative to the U.S. News & World Report ranking of law schools, this site seeks to provide a knowledgeable guide to the best law schools based on faculty quality, student quality, teaching quality and job placement. This website is a service of Law Professor Web Services, LLC, parent limited liability company of the Law Professor Blogs Network.

Per Capita Productivity of Articles in Top Journals, 1992 - 2008 - Roger Williams University School of Law Study.

ABA Journal 2008 article: The Rankings Czar: Law Deans hate Bob Morse's rankings. He'd like their help to make them better.

Prof. Brian Leiter's An Open Letter to Bob Morse of U.S. News (March 2008)

Call for Papers, Conferences, & Upcoming Symposia


Legal Scholarhip Network (LSN) Call for Papers and Conferences (get on the distribution list for LSN Professional Announcements and Job Openings.)

Legal Scholarship Blog - This blog is a collaborative effort from faculty and staff at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and the Gallagher Law Library at the University of Washington School of Law. The blog features calls for papers, conferences, and workshops, with links to relevant websites and papers and it also contains an event calendar.

Upcoming Symposia - A list of current and upcoming symposia compiled by Professor Rick Bales, Salmon P. Chase College of Law.

- upcoming AALS workshops and conferences 2009-2010.


In addition to the above mentioned sources, faculty can follow listservs and blogs in their subject areas.

Copyright & Publisher Information

General information regarding copyrighted material and "fair use" of copyrighted material is available on the U.S. Copyright Office website. The Mercer University policy regarding copyright is available at Section 3.14 of the University Faculty Handbook.

Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., the largest licenser of text reproduction rights in the world, was formed in 1978 to facilitate compliance with U.S. copyright law. CCC provides licensing systems for the reproduction and distribution of copyrighted materials in print and electronic formats throughout the world. The company currently manages rights relating to over 1.75 million works and represents more than 9,600 publishers and hundreds of thousands of authors and other creations. The Center also provides an online permission service.

USG Office of Legal Affairs: Guide to Understanding Copyright & Educational Fair Use

This guide to the TEACH Act, a result of the work completed by the University System of Georgia Committee, provides illustrative examples of fair use and legal background of copyright law.

USG Office of Legal Affairs: Distance Education - The Regents Guide to TEACH Act (Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act) - Excellent site for distance education questions and the TEACH Act, enacted in November 2002 as an amendment to the Copyright Act of 1976.

A Copyright Checklist for Online Courses

This checklist provides professors with information to determine whether they can use copyrighted materials in their online courses without seeking the author's permission.

Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center

Stanford University's web page provides a wide range of discussions pertaining to fair use, website permission and the public domain.

When Works Pass Into the Public Domain

A concise table from Univeristy of North Carolina simplifying the issue of when a copyright work is no longer covered by copyright restrictions based on its date of publication.

What Can You (Legally) Take From the Web? - article by Kirk Teska on IEEE Spectrum Online, April 2008.





Publisher Directories and Information

Alibris - rare books, out of print books, new and used (use this site if book unavailable on Amazon).

AbeBooks - rare books, out of print books, new and used (use this site if book unavailable on Amazon).


AcqWeb's Directory of Publishers and Vendors - an international directory of publishers and vendors used by libraries with links to publisher Web sites and email addresses. It is primarily maintained for the benefit of the library community, in particular, acquisitions, collection development and serials librarians, but can be helpful to faculty as well.



American Association of Law Libraries - List of Legal Publishers and Vendors

Includes a Divested Titles List which identifies current publishers of titles whose original publishers have ceased to exist. Also includes Corporate Affiliations of Legal Publishers.

University Press Catalogs

Web page provides links to the catalogs of university presses from the Association of American University Presses.

Originally created by Denise Gibson 2004; last modified 4/09

Copyright 2004 - 2009