How to Choose the Right Law Journal: A Practical Checklist

To choose the right law journal, match your paper to the journal’s scope, confirm that it runs genuine peer review, check its access and copyright terms, make sure any fee is charged only after acceptance, and verify its ISSN, indexing claims and timelines yourself. A few hours of checking before you submit can save you months of delay or a paper lost to a predatory publisher. This guide gives you a practical, step-by-step method and a checklist you can use for any journal.

Why the choice of journal matters

Where your paper appears affects who reads it, whether it is cited, and how selection committees view it. A strong paper in a journal that does not fit its subject can be desk rejected. The same paper in a poorly run journal may never be found by other researchers. Since the University Grants Commission discontinued the UGC-CARE list in 2025, choosing well has become the author’s own responsibility. Our guide on the UGC-CARE list being discontinued explains what changed.

Check 1: Scope and audience

Read the journal’s “Aims and Scope” page, then read three or four recent articles. Ask yourself:

• Does the journal publish on your subject, such as criminal law, constitutional law, tax, environment or technology law?
• Does it accept interdisciplinary work if your paper uses economics, sociology or policy analysis?
• Does it publish the type of piece you have written: long article, short article, case comment, legislative comment or book review?
• Who reads it: academics, practitioners, policymakers or students?

A simple test: if you cannot imagine your paper sitting next to the journal’s last issue, keep looking.

Check 2: Peer review and editorial board

A real journal tells you how it reviews papers. Look for a published peer review policy that states whether review is single-blind or double-blind, how many reviewers see each paper, and what decisions are possible. Our explainer on peer review and double-blind review covers what each model means.

Then check the editorial board:

• Are members named with their institutions and designations?
• Do the names match people you can find on their institutions’ own websites?
• Are they experts in the journal’s field, or a random mix of disciplines?
• Is there a named editor-in-chief and a working contact address?

Check 3: Open access and copyright

Open access means anyone can read your paper online without paying. This usually brings more readers and more citations. Check two things:

1. Licence: Is the article published under a stated licence, such as a Creative Commons licence? CC BY lets others share and reuse the work with attribution.
2. Copyright: Do you keep copyright, or must you transfer it to the publisher? If you transfer it, you may need permission to reuse your own work later.

For more on this, see our guide on copyright in research papers and CC BY.

Check 4: Fees, and when they are charged

Many good journals charge nothing. Others charge an article processing charge (APC) to cover editing, hosting and archiving. A fee by itself is not a warning sign. The timing and transparency are what matter:

Check 5: ISSN

An ISSN is an identifier for a serial publication. It helps libraries and databases identify a journal, but it is not a quality mark. Still, you should verify any ISSN a journal displays. Search it on the ISSN Portal and confirm that the title matches the journal you are looking at. Read more in our guide on what an ISSN is.

Check 6: Indexing claims

Journals often list databases where they are “indexed”. Some of these claims are genuine, some are exaggerated, and some refer to services that list almost anything. Never accept an indexing claim on the journal’s word. Go to the database itself and search for the journal title. If you cannot find it, treat the claim as false. For open access journals, DOAJ (the Directory of Open Access Journals) is one useful place to check.

Check 7: Timelines

Look for stated timelines for first decision, peer review and publication. Realistic peer review takes weeks, not days. A journal promising acceptance within 48 hours is not reviewing your work. At the same time, a journal that has not published an issue in two years may leave your paper waiting indefinitely. Check the date of the latest issue.

Check 8: Ethics and policies

A serious journal publishes its policies on plagiarism, conflicts of interest, corrections and retractions, AI use and author responsibilities. If a journal has no ethics page at all, that tells you something. See our guides on UGC plagiarism regulations and AI use in research papers.

The journal selection checklist

Copy this list and tick each item before you submit.

• Scope matches my subject and article type.
• Recent issues are published on schedule and are readable online.
• Peer review policy is published and names the review model.
• Editorial board members are named, real and relevant.
• Licence and copyright terms are stated clearly.
• Any fee is published in advance and charged only after acceptance.
• No guarantee of acceptance and no “fast track for a fee”.
• ISSN, if displayed, matches the ISSN Portal record.
• Indexing claims are verified on the databases themselves.
• Contact details, publisher name and address are visible.
• Ethics, plagiarism and AI policies are published.
• Word limit and citation style suit my manuscript.

A worked example

Suppose you have written a 7,000-word paper on bail conditions under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023. You shortlist three journals. Journal A is a general law journal that publishes criminal law regularly and runs double-blind review. Journal B publishes mainly corporate law. Journal C promises publication in three days for a fee paid at submission. Journal B fails on scope and Journal C fails on review and fees. Journal A is your first choice. If it rejects the paper, you revise using any feedback and move to the next suitable option.

Where a new journal fits

New journals cannot yet show indexing or citation history, so judge them on what they can show: a clear scope, a published peer review policy, named editors, transparent fees and open access terms. The Lexfolio Journal of Law, Policy and Social Sciences (LJLPS) is a new, double-blind peer reviewed, open access journal publishing under CC BY 4.0, with authors keeping copyright. It does not yet have an ISSN and will apply for an e-ISSN after its first issue.

Frequently asked questions

Is a journal with an ISSN automatically a good journal?

No. An ISSN only identifies a serial publication. It says nothing about peer review, editorial quality or ethics. Judge the journal on its policies and practices.

Should I avoid every journal that charges a fee?

No. Some genuine journals charge an article processing charge. What matters is that the fee is published in advance, charged only after acceptance, and never linked to guaranteed acceptance.

How do I check whether a journal is really indexed?

Search for the journal on the database’s own website rather than relying on logos or claims on the journal’s site. If the database does not list it, the claim is not reliable.

How many journals should I shortlist?

Shortlist three to five suitable journals in order of preference. Submit to one at a time, and move to the next only after a decision or a formal withdrawal.