OLH flips Oxford University journal away from a commercial publisher

This September, OLH welcomes another journal that is flipping from a commercial publishing model. The Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal (OUCLJ) will leave Taylor and Francis and move to OLH in Spring 2027.

Launched in 2001, the OUCLJ is the flagship journal of Oxford University’s postgraduate law community, designed for contributions from academics, professionals, and policymakers. It provides a forum for international legal scholarship from many different Commonwealth countries across a broad range of legal topics. Edited by postgraduate research students, the OUCLJ publishes original peer-reviewed research articles as well as book reviews, case comments and judges’ speeches. 

Peer reviewers of the journal’s application to join OLH noted that the OUCLJ is “a highly regarded and valuable publication” and that the peer-reviewed journal “compares favourably with the approach of US law reviews.” Another reviewer commented that “the journal has carved out a unique space for itself” publishing research articles with a Commonwealth law angle. 

OLH Executive Director Professor Caroline Edwards said of the move: “We’re excited to accept OLH’s first journal of legal scholarship, which complements our growing journals portfolio of humanities and social sciences subjects. In leaving a commercial publisher, the Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal is placing its faith in a community-governed, non-profit model of publishing. This is the way to address inequalities in the way that academic journals publishing is funded and we look forward to working with the OUCLJ team to advance access to legal research.”

Professor John Armour, Dean of the Oxford University Faculty of Law, said “we are delighted that the Open Library of Humanities will be taking forward publication of the Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal. The OLH is an innovative publisher run by academics for academics and has a sector-leading model for ensuring open access for all, to the benefit of readers and authors. We look forward to a fruitful partnership.”

OUCLJ General Editors Amy Hemsworth and Zoya Yasmine said: “We are thrilled to be the first law journal published by OLH. The OUCLJ has worked for 25 years promoting the exchange of legal scholarship throughout the Commonwealth, and to make all of this research freely available to readers across the world is really valuable for the academic community.”

The OUCLJ is currently in the process of migrating to OLH and will publish its first issue with OLH in Spring 2027. A new journal website with submissions portal will be announced shortly.

About OLH: The Open Library of Humanities is an award-winning, academic-led publisher of 40 diamond open access journals based at Birkbeck, University of London. With initial funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and subsequent support from Arcadia, a charitable fund, the OLH covers its costs by payments from an international library consortium rather than any author fee. This funding mechanism enables equitable open access in the humanities disciplines, with charges neither to readers nor authors.

 
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Featured image: a detail from "2022 Commonwealth Law Ministers Meeting" by The Commonwealth shared under a CC BY-NC 2.0 Generic license.