Open Access LAW Journals (Click here to download)
List of Open Access Law Journals: an Introduction
In the realm of open access digital legal information, more and more new information sources are coming up, both primary legal authorities and secondary sources like law journals, keeping with the ethos of Free Access to Law Movement (2002). Open access law journals are not a new phenomenon either. Law journals, particularly academic journals – not including law reporters, have been playing a pivotal role in legal research. These are mostly research output of various law schools, and in some cases, of some learned societies. In this era of technology driven transmission and delivery of information in the most customized manner, best suited for an individual user of information, the digital divide is fast eroding; even the challenge of “bandwidth poverty” is well tackled in many developing countries including India as well. Both the method of “Gold road” and “Green road” to open access are gaining the ground in the field of legal publication as well. The LIIs all over the world in different legal systems, jurisdictions, regions, nations and languages have made the access to open legal information all the more convenient. So we may say that we have progressed considerably in the direction of removing “financial, legal or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself” in pursuit of universal access to knowledge.
This compilation of some open access academic law journals, in English language only, is an endeavor to present a vast repository of legal information in a customized way. It is well understood, that this work is NOT a comprehensive listing of English language open access law journals. Sources for this compilation are also mentioned. As this is only a list in .docx file and not hosted on a web platform, no search interface is provided. Search engine of any kind, either open source or proprietary, cannot be used here. The effort to classify some of these journals subject-wise is something unique, for any of the open access law journal hosting platform have not worked in this direction yet. However, Australian LII is going to develop subject oriented libraries aggregating all materials on a given law subject (Greenfield 2011). Esteemed members of NUJS fraternity are therefore requested to give their valued opinions on improving upon this list, as well as inform about new open access journals, site/URL updation etc.