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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2020
This article focuses on the trends of law journals published by law schools in India. The article comprises a short overview of the free access to law movement around the world, and it is an attempt to showcase the growing open access to law movement in India. The article visualizes results of the responses received over the publications of legal scholarship in journals by 23 Indian law schools. The article appends recommendations for greater visibility of AW journals published by law schools in India.
Indian legal education institutions use a variety of names to describe their missions: law school, law college, law university, and so on. For consistency, this article will use the term “law school” as an umbrella term to describe all institutions of higher education in India that focus on legal pedagogy and legal scholarship.
© Akash Singh 2020. The author is Assistant Librarian, National Law University, Delhi, India.
© Sonam Singh 2020. The author is Library Superintendent, Indian Law Institute, New Delhi, India.
© Priya Rai 2020. The author is Deputy Librarian, National Law University, Delhi, India.
5 The Bar Council of India is a statutory body created by the Parliament of India to regulate and represent the Indian bar. The Bar Council performs a regulatory function by prescribing standards of professional conduct and etiquette and by exercising disciplinary jurisdiction over the bar. The Council is responsible for setting standards for legal education and grants recognition to universities whose degree in law would be counted as qualification for enrollment as an advocate. For more about the Bar Council of India visit http://www.barcouncilofindia.org/
6 On November 7, 2008, the directors of the law libraries at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Duke University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, New York University, Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, the University of Texas, and Yale University met in Durham, North Carolina at the Duke Law School. That meeting resulted in the “Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship,” which calls for all law schools to stop publishing their journals in print format and to rely instead on electronic publication coupled with a commitment to keep the electronic versions available in stable, open, digital formats. For more details visit https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/durhamstatement
7 Wildman, Wesley J., Bulbulia, Joseph, Sosis, Richard, and Schjoedt, Uffe, “Is the Open Access Movement about to Get Real?,” Religion, Brain & Behavior 9, no. 2 (2019): 105CrossRefGoogle Scholar. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2019.1595073.
8 Martin, P., “Legal Information: A Strong Case for Free Content, an Illustration of How Difficult Free may be to Define, Realize, and Sustain,” Speech at the Conference on Free Information Ecology, March 31–April 1, 2000. Retrieved from https://www.law.cornell.edu/working-papers/open/martin/free.html.
9 Greenleaf, G., “Free Access to Legal Information, LIIs, and Free Access to Law Movement,” in International Handbook of Legal Information Management eds. Danner, R. and Winterton, J. (IALL, Ashgate, 2011)Google Scholar. Retrieved from http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UNSWLRS/2011/40.html.
10 For more information about Free Access to Law Movement (FALM) and 34 Legal Information Institutes around the world, visit http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UNSWLRS/2011/40.html
11 Uhlir, P. F., Policy Guidelines for the Development and Promotion of Governmental Public Domain Information (Paris: UNESCO, 2004)Google Scholar.
12 Id.
13 Id.
14 Danner, R., “Applying the Access Principle in Law: The Responsibly of Legal Scholars,” International Journal of Legal Management 35(2007): 355Google Scholar.
15 Supra note 2.
16 Id.
17 Legal Information Institute of India. http://liiofindia.org/
18 Launch of Legal Information Institute of India at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi. Retrieved from https://www.nalsar.ac.in/Conferences/LII-Launch-Del-Hyd.pdf
19 Autonomous Law Schools in India. Retrieved form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_law_schools_in_India
20 NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad publishes 11 journals, making it an outlier.
21 See www.liiofindia.org
