Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Free Access to Law Reviews & Journals

A highlight of our first Research Madness workshop yesterday was the discussion of free sources for legal articles. While law review and journal articles can be a time-saving crash course on an unfamiliar legal topic, racking up search charges for background-gathering on Lexis and Westlaw can be counterproductive. Fortunately, a number of law reviews and journals have embraced open-access publishing, making it easier to find helpful secondary sources on a search of the free web.

The American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center has assembled a custom search engine which scours more than 300 open-access law reviews and legal journals. The engine includes all Duke Law journals (which have been provided free on the web since 1997), as well as many other major U.S. law reviews, several bar journals, and a variety of international and foreign law publications. It also searches SSRN and BePress, major sources for pre-publication articles and working papers. The LTRC engine is now linked from our Legal Databases & Links page, under the column “Finding Articles & Papers”.

What other tips and tricks will be offered in the library’s Research Madness workshops? Download the full calendar and find out for yourself!