Decisions of referees for peer-reviewed journals can often be whimsical at best.
I was at a conference in Chicago Friday and Saturday attended mostly by IO economists, some pure modelers and some empiricists. There was expression of disdain for law reviews by a couple of empirical economists who work with patent data. I commented privately to one of them that the arrogance and overclaiming by so many economists never ceased to amaze me. He did agree with what I said about the common whimsy of reviewers on PR journals. And it is certainly true that a reviewer can usually figure out who the authors are on a so-called blind reviewed paper. I have done a lot of reviewing for PR journals, and I know this to be true although I try hard to avoid finding out.
John
John R. Allison
The Spence Centennial Professor of Business, and
Professor of Intellectual Property
McCombs School of Business
University of Texas at Austin
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-----Original Message-----
From: Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) Talk [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Kurt Schulzke
Sent: Monday, October 28, 2013 4:00 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: On the fallacy of PRJ virtuosity
Laurie alluded to this Economist article on unreliable (peer-reviewed) research:
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble
It is an excellent, important read even though (or perhaps because) it is not peer reviewed. While some critiques of the non-PRJ law review publication process are justified, they hardly support the inference that PRJs offer more relevant or more reliable intelligence. I am often amused by legal faux pas that litter the landscape of leading accounting PRJs.
Meanwhile, so-called "double-blind" review is often really only single-blind. As an accounting colleague observed over the weekend, if a PRJ reviewer wants to discover the author of a piece, conference agenda, working paper series, and SSRN are an open book. Then there is the matter of submission fees. The same colleague has now paid $900 for a submit and then resubmit of the same article to a single journal. He wonders where all that money goes.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Laurie Lucas" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Monday, October 28, 2013 10:58:36 AM
Subject: Re: business education for lawyers - economist
I think this reflects the fact that entrepreneurship is the new black and a potential revenue raiser for law schools (through LLM programs, etc.) more than it reflects reality.
Another interesting article in that same edition looked at the failure of those in the academy to engage in research that replicates prior scientific studies, and particularly the failure of academic journals to publish such findings, especially if the attempt to replicate the prior study failed. And though much legal research is different, I think the article should give us all pause as we consider what constitutes a "contribution" to the literature and how the academy "filters" the same. Laurie
From: Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) Talk [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Robert Bird [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, October 28, 2013 9:17 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: business education for lawyers - economist
My personal favorite passage. I had no idea that all I taught was tax, corporate law, and bankruptcy.
“Business schools, for their part, often give MBA students no more than a perfunctory introduction to law: they do learn about tax (and how to avoid it), and maybe take short courses on corporate law as it affects such things as issuing shares or declaring bankruptcy; but they learn little else on the panoply of laws that will bear down on them during their careers.
Chicago’s new course is just a first step in closing the yawning gap between the entrepreneurship that a corporate lawyer needs and the legal knowledge that a good entrepreneur would benefit from. Like the farmer and the cowman in “Oklahoma!”, the lawyer and the manager should be friends, though their interests all too often come into conflict.”
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21588086-effort-turn-lawyers-creators-not-suffocators-business-commercial-law?frsc=dg%7Ca
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