So, we need to talk about the et al. campaign and why I keep on tagging law reviews on this here hellsite.

1/

You'll recall the gist: et al. is a citation practice promoted by @LegalBluebook (edited by 4 enriched law reviews) but adopted by individual journals, which disappears non-first-authors if they happen to write in groups of more than two.

The practice is indefensible, and it's easy to fix.

Individual journals can adopt a contrary rule -- @ColumLRev's in fact -- which is, conveniently, in my Twitter bio.

Over the summer, a group of us tagged individual journals and convinced many of them to switch to the Fair Citation Rule.

Here's our chart. Much more to be done, but our progress was heartening. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XQiDaLQUFB9NfCKQzDJs6sljg7ntP1nKQWZ-aVxOGBo/edit#gid=0

I hit pause on the campaign for the election but also to reflect on criticism I got from a number of law student journal members, who thought (and told me) that tagging journals on twitter was wrong.

Their arguments came in several forms, and were pressed with various degrees of directness.

Some said I was focused on an unimportant problem, and/or that a better solution would start at the other end of the telescope (like fixing how citation counts are run).

That's fine - I don't agree, and in any event, disappearing authors isn't just important because what it does to citation counts.

Who gets credit - who gets seen - is a political choice that law reviews should make intentionally. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/politics-of-citation

But the more wounding objection was that tagging law reviews was unfair to the *students* who worked at the law reviews.

Some felt called out, embarrassed, and chided.

This was worth thinking about, as I know that Twitter encourages all kinds of petty cruelty.

If it's true that individual students were personally upset, then I needed to think about how I felt about it.

Plus, it's 2020--everything is just sharper!

Stepping back, I intended to call out the journals and to persuade them to drop an unfair and biased citation rule.

Journal practices are built over time. Criticizing current choices is thus a systemic indictment, directed at institutional handles, but run by individuals.

That's *not* the same as a personal attack, but some took it as one.

In part, I think, because journal editors may not feel responsible for decisions made by prior boards. And of course the *people* who run the accounts aren't always those who make citation decisions.

I feel bad that editors had this reaction. But-respectfully-I don't agree it that it was a justified one to tagging institutional twitter handles.

The power dynamic (my status) makes this hard, but even so, tagging institutions is the only practical way of moving them forward.

Since 2004 (!) I have tried alternatives, ranging from blog posts, to emails directed at journals (never answered), to conversations with individual editors at both institutions where I've worked. No luck. ( @oonahathaway in an earlier thread described a similar failed attempt.)

But, the publicness of twitter engagement, together with the relatively easy ask here, and the community of people who care, makes this a problem uniquely well placed to this kind of campaign.

But that doesn't change how editors feel about it.

TBH, I do know sort of how this feels. When people tweet about Penn's (or before that Temple's) failures--whether personnel based or institutionally rooted--I feel attacked. I identify with the institutions I'm at, and it's hard not to take it personally.

When Penn renamed itself, dozens of students came into my mentions about the choice, which I had no real role in. At first, I was upset and defensive. But eventually I realized that students were looking for someone to talk to who might actually respond.

And, truthfully, I did have more power than they did to do something about the name. (Which turned out not to be very much, except for talking about the naming in public and to try, in private, to improve the school's communications.)

The same was less true when people came into my mentions about a particular colleague's behavior. There I was stuck -- I could do less, say less, and felt pretty crappy all around. But I understood why I was being pulled in: because I was there.

The result is that over time, I've gotten a bit better at navigating criticism of the institutions I belong to. Even when I'm tagged about the latest outrage, I know that it's not about *me* precisely. It's a poke to see if I want to or can do something. But it's still hard.

Here, I'm tagging institutions, *not* individual students.

These are privileged associations which have been, as a group, notoriously unresponsive over my nearly 20 year career to multiple attempts to accomplish change.

That failure isn't the *fault* of this year's boards. Or last years. That's the point of systemic problems. It's not about individual fault at all.

But the et al. rule remains a problem. And I'm trying to fix it. Reform at the journal level is the best path forward.

And when I say that I'm going to keep on pushing journals until the change is widespread, I do very much appreciate that some editors might find that annoying. A few have told me so. Others have subtweeted me.

You know what? I'm ok with it. You are still going to hear from me.

I get that this isn't the world's most pressing problem of social justice. It's not even the biggest problem with law reviews. Or with law review's publishing practices. Goodness gracious, the system is really third-best at best.

But it is a problem that I have thought about, and it is a problem that's eminently fixable, and it is a problem that you, law review editors, can do something about.

So...charitably, kindly, understanding the competing demands on your time...I'm going to stick with it.

I'm hoping that as 2020 recedes, and maybe the world gets better, those who I've irritated or failed to persuade will change their minds. But regardless, the great part of this campaign is that you can ignore it just by turning off your phone.

Which we should all do more often!