The Faculty Lounge

Updated Author Submission Information For Law Reviews

Allen Rostron and Nancy Levit have updated their SSRN document Information for Submitting Articles to Law Reviews & Journals.  It's ready for the Spring 2012 season and encompasses 202 law reviews.

How many journals do we need?

A popular refrain of late is "How many law schools do we need?!?!"  A valid question to be sure.  I, however, would like to pose a somewhat related one.  Namely, how many law journals do we need?

Now, I am  not referring to new schools starting their own general journals -- I think every law school should produce a journal if, for no other reason, than to provide their students with the opportunity to work on a journal.  Instead, I'm referring to the proliferation of secondary journals.

Don't get me wrong -- I love secondary journals and I think that, in many respects, they play an essential role in the legal academy.  For example, a speciality journal dedicated to an area of law that has historically been looked down upon by general law reviews (legal writing is one example that comes to mind) can provide a much needed outlet to those (both scholars and readers) in that field.  But as schools add more and more to the list, I just wonder at what point are we maybe hurting the academy.  After all, each new journal that pops up needs to publish something (how else could it justify its existence).  Assuming the number of available articles remains constant, the more journals out there accepting submissions, the more articles get accepted.  And up to a point, that's great!  

However, I'm also assuming that only a certain percentage of available articles are of publishable quality (having worked as a law review editor, I feel fairly confident with this assumption, but feel free to correct me).  Yet, the more articles that are needed to fill all the available journals, the more likely are those of unpublishable quality to nonetheless find a home.  And it is no doubt those articles that critics of the field will seize upon when looking for a way to criticize legal scholarship.

Of course, maybe none of this should matter.  Indeed, who is to say what's "of publishable quality"?  Plus, these same arguments can be levied against general journals (of course, with the addition of a general journal at a new law school, we have the addition of a new law faculty producing scholarship).  In addition, perhaps it doesn't matter what's published, given that we can all read and thus figure out for ourselves what is good and what is not.  Finally, more journals provide more opportunities for students to work on a journal. 

So I'm curious.  What's your opinion?  The more the merrier or is there a point of diminishing returns?

A Rose By Any Other Name . . .

First off, a big thank you to Dan for allowing me to serve as a guest here at the Faculty Lounge.  I'm honored to participate in this wonderful community.  So thank you very much for having me.

Today I was talking with a good friend of mine about the art of titling law review articles.  Personally, I've often thought that it would be quite interesting to enter all the law review titles (from some discrete time period) in a database and see which key words pop up the most often.  I'm thinking "normative" and "heuristic" would have to be up there . . . 

All this begs the question:  How do we go about titling our law review articles?   More specifically -- Should we try to sound fancy?  Should we try to be cute?  Should we try to write something that will simply sound impressive to the law review editors we hope to persuade to publish our work?

A relatively recent article by Professors Leah Christensen and Julie Oseid, entitled "Navigating the Law Review Article Selection Process" (available on SSRN here) found that, in some cases, a "catchy" title can work against you with law review editors.

So, I'm curious.  How do you go about titling your articles?  And, other than to simply describe what the article is about, what other motivations influence the titles you ultimately select?

How to Write a Good Abstract for a Law Review Article

When you write an abstract, you are marketing your own work--you act as your own PR agent.  You've already done the work of writing your article, and now you must do the good work of presenting your research Lite-style to articles editors. Aside from your school's letterhead, it's the most influential aspect of your paper.  Think of it as intellectual plastic surgery: you augment the exterior to convey to others how you think you should be seen. (See, Jocelyn Wildenstein)

We've seen fabulous advice on other blogs about writing a really good abstract (Dudziak and Volokh). They are great for achieving the appropriate tone and style that will impress student editors.  Missing from these instructions is a MadLib-style skeleton. Sometimes, it's nice to sit back and be uncreative in your creativity. (See, "Sh!t [insert very specific demographic here] People Say" meme. If you have no idea what this is, click here.)  First time writers or seasoned scholars all can benefit from a 1040-EZ approach to abstract writing that conveys scholarly import without seeming overtly boastful.

After all, your paper is the most important thing ever written, right?  The other people that wrote on the same thing tried to do it right, but your new idea is so amazing too?  And you have a recommendation for improvement or a different way of seeing things?  Just like my new way of writing abstracts?

Here is is: short and sweet.  Fill in the blanks and Voila!  You are on your way to publication. Follow this abstractoskeleton, and you will have an excellent abstract. Other people may have their own way of doing it, or disagree with my ordering...but then they should write their own abstracts.

Take That, Europe! (And Australia and Canada)

Over at the Antitrust and Competition Policy Blog, Danny Sokol has had a couple of interesting posts about the importance of European, Canadian, and Australian law journals to US scholarship.  The answer – not that much.  According to Danny, the top ten most cited non-US journals (with overall rankings noted) are:

102 European Journal of International Law

237 International Journal of Constitutional Law

268 Journal of International Criminal Justice

283 International and Comparative Law Quarterly

302 Journal of International Economic Law

357 Journal of Competition Law and Economics

369 University of Toronto Law Journal

407 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies

463 McGill Law Journal

469 The Modern Law Review 

He concludes:

This suggests to me that US scholars and others who publish in US law reviews do not read non-US legal scholarship (some of which is westlaw searchable). Citations counts for economics and finance journals (none of which are westlaw searchable) are far higher than non-US law journals.

Now, there could be any number of plausible explanations for this . . . but here is where things get really interesting.  Especially if you’re bored at home during the holiday break.

 In a follow-on post, Sokol explains that he has received a bit of email feedback on the original post, and was surprised by “the broad agreement between both US and European professors on the reasons for the low citation counts.”

The explanations include:

• European journals tend to focus on doctrinal developments
• Many European developments are written about narrowly so as not to have broader impact outside of a European audience
• European legal scholarship overall is weaker than US scholarship
• What top UK and European journals look for is not cutting edge and what are essentially case reviews oftentimes place in the top journals
• You cannot write law and economics work in German law schools which means that the German scholars most likely to have an impact in the United States often do not teach in Germany
• Peer review in the European context hurts good European scholarship because too many senior people are not sophisticated and therefore want more work like their own
• The best scholars write in non-European peer review or US law reviews
• The harshest critic wrote "Compare the antitrust offerings of Oxford and Cambridge University Presses USA vs. Oxford and Cambridge University Presses UK" and then gave examples that it is better that I not post. 

This list of explanations is not exhaustive. Danny has more.  Given that the Faculty Lounge is now a global sensation, I suspect some of our Canadian, Australian, and European readers may have some thoughts. And perhaps Jacqui will want to weigh in, at least on the Australian comparison.  Or perhaps she’ll want to stay the heck out of it . . .

 

Legal Fiction Contest

The Journal of Legal Education and Southwestern Law School are teaming up to host a legal fiction contest.  Details are here and here.

Bad Words

OK, at Jacqui’s suggestion, and also because I can’t resist any longer, I am going to invite readers to rant.  Ranting can be good, right?  Ranting can be refreshing.  And, hopefully, ranting will lead to reform. 

My invitation:  Which words you dislike the most in legal scholarship?  For example (these are just examples, mind you, I’m not necessarily condemning their usage):  opine, proceed, moreover (alright, moreover isn’t a random example; I really loathe it), furthermore. 

The Case For Contractions

Two journals—the West Virginia Law Review and the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy—have recently returned their first round edits to me.  Both journals did a splendid job on all fronts and, I find myself indebted to, and humbled by, some highly talented and dedicated student editors. 

Still, I want to harp on one issue.  Both journals, like the other journals where I have published, have asked me to refrain from contractions:  write “do not,” not “don’t,” and say “cannot,” not “can’t.”  I know that their suggestions, earnest and sensible, are motivated by an utterly sane desire to present a finished product that appears more mature, more professional. 

Yet, I tend to doubt that contractions in fact undermine their author’s credibility and seriousness. 

I know that few us can write as well as this guy (how I would be gratified simply to acquire the sobriquet of The Poor Man’s Don Herzog. . . .), but doesn’t the great—nay, the one and only—Don Herzog demonstrate in grand style that amazing ideas needn’t be leaded with the patina of formalistic prose? 

Can’t we make the case that the idiom of legal scholarship is already too damn stiff and formal, and, let’s be honest, often too dreary to slog through, after a long day of teaching and committee meetings and packed office hours and a nerve wracking drive on I-75 back to the suburbs of Weston at 8 pm from Miami Gardens?  Can’t we have a good dollop of humor, sarcasm, and mischief—and all of it seasoned with contractions—which can help the writing, and their attendant insights, go down easier?

Anyone interested in my modest call for reform? Won't cha consider it?

 

Submission Guide for Online Law Review Supplements

John Marshall law prof Colin Miller (a friend of the blog and an Oscar trivia master) has updated and posted his Submission Guide for Online Law Review Supplements on SSRN.  Here is the link.

Journal of Christian Legal Thought

The Institute for Christian Legal Studies, a cooperative ministry sponsored by The Christian Legal Society and Regent University School of Law, has just published the inaugural issue of its Journal of Christian Legal Thought.  Several law professors serve on the editorial board, including William Brewbaker (Alabama), Zachary Calo (Valparaiso), Kevin Lee (Campbell), Scott Pryor (Regent), Michael Scaperlanda (Oklahoma), Michael Schutt (Regent), and Robert Vischer (St. Thomas).  You can find a mission statement, statement of purpose, and editorial policy on page 2 of the issue.

CFP: Changes in Legal Education and Legal Ethics

Creighton Law Review has a Call for Papers for its March 2012 Symposium, Changes in Legal Education and Legal Ethics:

The Creighton Law Review announces the fifth annual symposium at Creighton University School of Law in Omaha, Nebraska.  The Symposium will explore the themes of changes in legal education and legal ethics.  The Law Review is currently soliciting papers to be published its the fourth edition, which will be devoted to the symposium themes.  From the articles selected for publication in the fourth edition, the Law Review will chose articles to be presented at the symposium. 

Deadline for submissions: November 16, 2011, with a copy of the article, and also an abstract.  further details at the Symposium web-site (link above).

Hat tip:  Legal Scholarship Blog

SSRN Now Selling Bound Copies

I just got an announcement from SSRN that it is now selling bound copies of eligible articles.  For more information, see Purchase Bound Hard Copy. Authors may opt out.

I have two questions.  First, will law reviews start rejecting papers posted to SSRN, or require the author to opt out?  Second, with the abstract-publishing "journals," and hard copies available, is a paper on SSRN now "published scholarship?"  Clearly, Deans will want articles in top-tier law reviews.

Well, three questions:  will they print front-and-back?

Call For Papers -- Hate and Political Discourse

CALL FOR PAPERS Deadline: March 15, 2012

“Hate and Political Discourse”

Journal of Hate Studies

Volume X, No. 1 (2012/13)

Guest Editor: Robert L. Tsai, J.D. Professor of Law, American University, Washington College of Law

About the Theme

Often shielded by constitutional rules and nurtured by political discourse, hate has a mercurial existence in the popular imagination. In the “arena of angry minds,” as Richard Hofstadter called American political life, political actors sometimes choose to condemn hatred, distance themselves from it, appeal to its existence, or foment it.

Even when subjugation, discrimination, or violence is not the goal, the politics of hate can pay off. Rather than seeking its total eradication, many democracies assume the permanence of hate and seek to minimize its excesses or to punish and prohibit specific expressions. Are such assumptions well-founded, and such strategies wise?

Some of the social groups marked through the techniques of hatred have changed over time, as the political dividends for resorting to strategies of hate have shifted, while other groups seem to be consistent targets of hate. Technological advances offer new tools to combat hatemongering even as they can make demagogues more effective.

What are the structural conditions that allow hate to thrive or might permit its isolation? How might inroads be made in the law or politics of inclusion, especially in countries with strong commitments to rhetorical freedom and popular sovereignty?

Call for Submissions

The Journal of Hate Studies welcomes original papers treating the theme, “Hate and Political Discourse,” from a wide range of disciplines, including history, law, philosophy, political science, sociology, criminal justice, social psychology, economics, anthropology, geography, journalism, communications, rhetoric, literature, educational studies, and cultural studies.

We especially encourage original treatments of the following topics:

• Hate and popular sovereignty • How hate can foster alternative communities and movements • Cultural foundations of hate • Historical changes in rhetorical strategies • Political parties and hate • Necessary political conditions for hate • Empirical approaches to the problem of hate • The role of hate in nation-building • How literature, rhetoric, journalism or other forms of communication can fuel or

discourage hate 

• • •

Geographical differences in how hatred is sustained or combated Comparative approaches and cross-cultural challenges New technologies in combating or fomenting hatred in the realm of political discourse

We anticipate hosting an invitational Symposium in Fall 2012, either at American University or Gonzaga University, in conjunction with the publication of this Volume. Authors published in this Volume would be invited to present their work at the Symposium.

About the Journal

The Journal of Hate Studies is a peer-reviewed publication of the Gonzaga University Institute for Hate Studies. The Journal of Hate Studies is an international scholarly journal promoting the sharing of interdisciplinary ideas and research relating to the study of what hate is, where it comes from, and how to combat it. It presents cutting-edge essays, theory, and research that deepen the understanding of the development and expression of hate.

Guidelines for Submissions

Submissions are typically expected to be between 5,000 and 10,000 words. Submissions may be made in either of the following ways.

• As an attachment sent by email to hatestudies@gonzaga.edu • Through the Journal’s online site

(http://journals.gonzaga.edu/index.php/johs/information/authors) Submissions should be made in MS Word format. Please do not submit PDFs.

Submissions should be presented in APA format, with endnotes rather than footnotes. However, legal scholarship may be presented in Bluebook or ALWD.

More information about submission guidelines, the Journal of Hate Studies, and the Gonzaga University Institute for Hate Studies can be found at http://gonzaga.edu/hatestudies

For Questions or Communications

Robert L. Tsai, J.D. Guest Editor Professor, American University Washington College of Law rtsai@wcl.american.edu 202.274.4370

John Shuford, J.D., Ph.D. Director, Gonzaga University Institute for Hate Studies hatestudies@gonzaga.edu 509.313.3665

 

Download a copy of the announcement here:  Download Call for Papers.JournalHateStudies (FINAL 06-29-11)

Complete Nonsense: The Bluebook's Requirement for the Year of a Statute

I'm currently finishing up the final proofing of an article that is very heavy on statutory citations.  The experience is once again bringing up one of my Bluebook pet peeves -- the Bluebook's requirement for the year of a statute.

There are lots of people who complain endlessly about the Bluebook, but I'm not usually one of them as I generally like the Bluebook . . . except when it comes to this issue.

When you cite to a statute, you have to include a parenthetical with a year in it.  What useful information might that year convey?  Like the year of a book, an article, a case, or almost anything else you would cite to, it might convey the year that statute came into existence.  That would be somewhat useful information, no doubt.  It certainly gets complex with statutes because they are changed more frequently, but information about when the statute or provision was written could indeed be useful.

However, that's not what the Bluebook requires.  Instead, the Bluebook wants "the year that appears on the spine of the volume, the year that appears on the title page, or the latest copyright year -- in that order of preference."  So, instead of getting information about when the statute was written, we get information about when the entire volume of code (or sub-volume, for re-issued individual books within the entire code) was published.  How does that help in understanding the individual provision cited to?  In no way whatsoever.

What makes this particularly enraging is that student editors rarely know this rule.  Instead, they cite to the year on the source they go to for cite-checking purposes -- the copyright of the online version in Westlaw or Lexis.  And that year is always the current year, so you wind up with every statute having the same parenthetical -- (2011).  Which is the twin horror of being both wrong AND useless.

What's the solution?  In my mind, it's what one of the journals I worked on in law school did, which is to just get rid of the year in a statutory cite altogether.  What matters, after all, is that the statute is still on the books, not much other information.  If other information does matter, such as the year the statute was adopted or revised, it's probably been discussed in the text anyway.  And, if for some reason the statute has different text or content in different codifications, then that also should be discussed in the text in some way.

But for your run-of-the-mill citation to a statute, get rid of the year.  Anything else is just complete nonsense.

Call for Papers: Regulation in the Fringe Economy

From an email I recently received from friend Jim Hawkins (University of Houston):

        The symposium Regulation in the Fringe Economy represents the most significant attempt to date by legal scholars to address the vexing legal and social issues created by lenders on the fringes of the economy who offer payday, auto title, for-profit college, and refund anticipation loans. A complete list of confirmed participants and their paper topics is available at the conference website: http://law.wlu.edu/fringe.

        The Frances Lewis Law Center and the Washington and Lee Law Review are delighted to sponsor this conference which will take place on November 11, 2011 at the Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia. The Washington and Lee Law Review will publish a symposium issue featuring the conference papers in 2012.

        The sponsors’ goal is to encourage and recognize excellent legal scholarship in this area. To advance their goal, the sponsors invite lawyers, judges, and scholars to submit papers on regulation in the fringe economy. Papers on related high-risk consumer financial products are also encouraged. An author should submit his or her manuscript in an exclusive submission on or before August 15, 2011. A submission should be no longer than 50 pages or 15,000 words. A limited number of submissions will be accepted. Authors will be notified of the acceptance of their paper and participation in the symposium no later than August 20, 2011.

        Selected authors will present their papers at the November 11 conference. All participants are asked to provide their own travel expenses. Papers specifying the conference may be mailed to the Washington and Lee Law Review or sent electronically to lawreview@wlu.edu. The Law Review Articles Editors and Washington and Lee University School of Law Professor Margaret Howard will review the papers.

        Even if you are not able to submit a paper, the sponsors invite you to attend the conference. There will be no charge for attending. The Frances Lewis Law Center is a licensed Virginia Continuing Legal Education provider which will supply Virginia CLE credit for those attending.

Alabama Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Review

It is my pleasure to mention that the inaugural issue of the Alabama  Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Review has appeared.  This is something that Alabama students have been planning for a long time -- it was under discussion for a few years before I left Tuscaloosa and I have finished my third year in Chapel Hill.  The deliberation and planning has been worth the wait and the first issue is a lovely capstone to a lot of hard work, as well as a nice invitation to future work.

The journal's editors --  inspired I suppose by the old standby, "We Shall Overcome" -- solicited some people to write about the question, "have we overcome?"  My contribution to the inaugural issue, which reframed the question as has the University of Alabama overcome, is here.  It was a pleasure having the chance to revisit the University's history and a few other topics in the state's history.

The inaugural issue has a fabulous collection of articles -- Anita L. Allen writes about "Associational Privacy and the First Amendment: NAACP v. Alabama, Privacy and Data Protection"; Sheryll Cashin writes about "Shall We Overcome?  'Post-Racialism' and Inclusion in the 21st Century"; Judge U.W. Clemon and Stephanie Y. Moore write about "Justice Clarence Thomas: The Burning of Civil Rights Bridges"; Royal Dumas writes about "The Students at the University of Alabama in 1845 and the Families that Sent Them"; and Joseph Singer writes about "The Anti-Apartheid Principle in American Property Law."  Two of the journal's editors Karthik Subramanian and Alexander E. Vaughn also have essays here -- Karthik's on the Alabama anti-sex toys statute and  Alexander's on the standards for plain view searches involving computers.

I am very much honored to be in such fantastic company.  I'm very much looking forward to reading all of the pieces and hope to chat about several of them in more depth -- especially Cashin's and Singer's, but I want to talk for a moment about Royal's article, which I read an early version of many years ago.   Royal goes back to trace the students at Alabama in the mid 1840s, to find out something about their social origins.  Perhaps unsurprisingly -- though importantly -- he shows that they came from quite wealthy families.  This helps us fill in the picture of proslavery thought on the campus.  Royal's article provides an important context for the statements of proslavery thought that appeared frequently in literary addresses at Alabama in the years before the Civil War.

The image is of the Birmingham Public Library, a place that occupies a small role in my essay.  I took that picture when I was back in Birmingham in February.

Law Review Articles on Amazon

One of my colleagues recently noticed that a number of law review articles are available for sale (or rather digital download) at amazon.com  An example is here.  She asked me if there were any legal problems with this and I replied that I didn't think so because presumably law reviews will not license the articles to amazon unless they have authority to do so under their publication agreements with the individual authors.  We continued going back and forth on the issue because my colleague was uneasy that someone might be making money commercially from her work in a manner she had not contemplated.  The pricepoint for these downloads from amazon is around $10 per article (or really $9.95 because that sounds so much cheaper).  My assumption was that if individual law review articles are priced that way, it's probably due to the request of the publisher and amazon is probably getting a relatively small cut.  In other words if this is like other electronic downloads that amazon does, amazon can release kindle books much more cheaply when the paper version publisher does not set a particularly high price (or when there is no paper version publisher and the author is engaging in e-publishing direct through amazon).

So, aside from the fact that very few people are probably buying articles from amazon that they could access from other sources more cheaply (or free), if less conveniently, I would assume that it wouldn't be amazon making huge profits from this.  Are the law reviews actually making any money out of it then?  And, if so, how does the pricing of an individual article compare to the pricing of an entire volume of the relevant law review?  And how are journals deciding whether to release material on amazon and, when they do, are they releasing all of their published articles or just select articles that the editors think may appeal to a more general audience?

 

Texas Law Review's On-Line Book Reviews Section

As I was looking to see if Mark Ascher's review of Lawrence Friedman's Dead Hands is up on the net yet (it isn't), I saw that the Texas Law Review is starting an on-line companion, Dicta, which will review books.  This is most exciting.  Thank you Sandy Levinson!

I'm going to be interested in seeing how other reviews respond and also whether there is a return of the lengthy essay review, which seems to have gone out of fashion of late.  The first two reviews up on the TLR's website are rather short -- John Parry's review of Kal Raustial's Does the Constitution Follow the Flag?: The Evolution of Territoriality in American Law and Guha Krishnamurthi's review of Eyal Zamir's andBarak Medina's Law, Economics, and Morality are each about four pages long.  I'm intuiting that perhaps the lengthy reviews will continue to appear in the print version of the TLR and that shorter reviews will appear on-line.  I think that's a very sensible division.

I've written a little bit about the changing nature of the Michigan Law Review's annual book review issue a couple of times.

A Cert Pool For Law Review Submissions?

In a recent post, blogger Dustin Cho (a former HLR editor), argues that law faculty should share information about the offer practices of the various law reviews.  If professors knew both how quickly a journal reviews articles, and whether it uses exploding offers, they could submit articles to journals strategically.

Cho's post is reasonable, but unfortunately fails to account for the full scope of the whacked-out law review submission process.  Among other things, it appears that many journals engage in a review practice that consists principally of sorting high value authors out of the mix, reviewing their work first, and waiting for expedite requests regarding all other submissions. 

You can't blame journals.  When a mid-level law review receives 1500 submissions, knowing full well that hundreds of these authors would ultimately decline an offer if one was made, it becomes hard to figure out how to use the journal's limited reading resources - and how to do so in a way that does not totally undermine morale.  My sense is that the journals that read the highest percentage of submissions are at the edges of the rankings.  The super-elites, like HLR, seem to at least scan everything (and can do so because they have large boards made up of editors willing to kill themselves for the journal.  These journals also seem to devolve reading responsibilities far more widely than most law reviews.)  Journals with the least developed reputations receive small numbers of submissions and are therefore able to read them all.  But the journals in between are crushed by volume and cannot call upon the labor resources available to the super-elites.

One possibility might be for a group of journals to create the equivalent of a cert pool.  If 75 law reviews got together and pitched in two editors to read and review articles, they could burn through 500 articles quickly.  The journals could take a week or two break and then hold a draft.  Just as in football, for example,  journals would choose both on absolute quality and topical need.  Assuming that the 75 journals agreed not to poach each other, this would radically reduce the size of the pool of journals engaging in expedites.   And while some individual journals in individual years might be slightly weakened, I suspect that the overall boat would rise - while making everyone's life happier.

I'm sure one could come up with a number of complaints. 

What about variable quality of student memos?  What about strategic production of bad memos - when a journal wants to protect a piece for itself by burying it under a negative cert memo?   One way to address these issues - at limited cost - would be to assign every piece to two readers. 

How would you order the draft?  One could use lots - but one could also rely on W&L or USN rankings - on the theory that the better ranked journals will typically have their pick anyway.  The lower ranked journals still win, because they will get their first choice before the other journals select a a second (or perhaps third - see below) piece.

What about law school reputation - everyone wants their school to claw ahead, and this might flatten journal quality?  Perhaps, but I suspect that journals that work harder investigating and reading pieces will still do better. 

What about journals that publish more issues and need more articles - won't they be hurt in the process?  One possibility would be to weight the draft and give schools taking more pieces more picks each round.

Seeking Comments on a Draft: A Question of Etiquette

Posted at the request of a friend who is a law professor:

"I want to hear from law profs about the etiquette of asking faculty at other (higher ranked) schools to read and comment on article drafts being prepared for submission.  Is it important that the author actually KNOW the person before asking him or her to review an article draft?  Or to have some excuse for soliciting input (i.e., the article cites/discusses his or her work)?  Or is it OK to ask anyone in the relevant field, expecting that many will simply decline or be unresponsive?"