Creation and promotion of a new Journal

Based on talking to current editors and people interested in the field, here is my read of what the most important steps are for the first year or so:

1. Put together a high-quality board of editors who will help manage the journal as well as help solicit articles and promote the new journal
2. Put together a really high-quality board of willing reviewers who may not be as involved, but agree to have their name associated with the journal and help write reviews
3. Decide what software to use (I humbly suggest Scholastica)
4. Register for an eISSN
5. Establish your costs and a viable economic model (I would check out this great page from OASIS)
6. Establish your review, copyediting, and layout process
7. Decide what indexes you want to (eventually) be included in, and contact those indexes to know what the content and technical requirements are (for example: PubMed's technical requirements and ejournal requirements)
8. Announce your journal at a large field-related event, and tout all the big names you have
9. Publish your first issue, and advertise its contents to scholars in your field
10. Activily solicit submissions for the next issue
11. Publish more issues
12. Expand indexing and citation tracking of your journal to both evaluate and improve your readership abd ranking

For further reading:

• From the Directory of Open Access Journals: http://www.doaj.org/bpguide/set-up/
• A list of references, put together by SPARC: http://www.arl.org/sparc/partnering/planning/index.shtml
• David J. Solomon's guide to OA journals: http://www.developing-oa-journals.org/Guide_to_developing_oa_journals.pdf
• OASIS guide to OA journal business models: http://www.openoasis.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=347&Itemid=377

You have some important advantages.  The most important is that it doesn't cost you much to publish. 

I plan to obtain submissions from authors who have already published their article in another Journal.

That way, you can collect some cool stuff in your article, and, hopefully, get some people to read their stuff off of your Journal, rather than the original.

Dale,

While I cannot say much specifically about putting together a law journal, I think that one route you may want to go is to go as academically broad as possible without giving up quality and pursuing authors outside of the legal world.  I am sure that there are a number of political scientists, historians, economists, etc., who would be interested in spreading their publishing experience.

Best of luck!

I can’t speculate concrete answer  while I feel you’re in the right place. I just would like to underline that Scholastica is not only about law, social science and humanities. I think science, medicine and technology journals initiatives are also welcome.

Thanks for the feedback thus far - keep it coming please.

One other thing I thought of is whether it would be better to do a new journal through a University affiliation or through just myself.  Maybe attaching to the established name of a University would lend credibility and prestige but that also means giving up control and power.

Dale.

Also wondering if anyone knows of Journal by laws, regulations, policies that might be able to borrow to use as a template?  Even paid ones would be fine.

Helps to have a starting point and don't want to copy someone's in breach of copyright without their permission.

Maybe the Open Access movement has some sample ones to use?

Thanks,

Dale.

http://www.dalereardon.com.au

Also wondering if anyone knows of Journal by laws, regulations, policies that might be able to borrow to use as a template?  Even paid ones would be fine.

Helps to have a starting point and don't want to copy someone's in breach of copyright without their permission.

Maybe the Open Access movement has some sample ones to use?

Thanks,

Dale.

http://www.dalereardon.com.au