About the Journal

Begun in 1953, the Journal of the Copyright Society (formerly known as the Journal of the Copyright Society of the USA, and before that, the Bulletin of the Copyright Society of the USA) is the world’s leading peer-reviewed law review exclusively devoted to the subject of copyright law. For seventy years, the Journal has published landmark articles on copyright law by prominent academics, judges, practitioners, and government officials.

Each issue includes a combination of theoretical and doctrinal articles, notes and summaries of domestic and foreign legislative and administrative developments, book reviews, and news of important court decisions throughout the world. The Journal contains announcements of interest to the copyright field including news, reports, and notices from the Copyright Office.

The Journal also publishes transcripts of key proceedings and key copyright lectures, including the Brace Lecture, held annually each November, and the Meyer Lecture, also held in November.  We also hold a virtual roundtable symposium each spring, starting in 2025 that approaches a topic from a variety of viewpoints. 

The Journal also is proud to make available our historical volumes, spanning over 70 years of copyright history.  The issues in real time document the news of the day, key cases, and articles, and are in invaluable resource for anyone working in copyright.  

The Journal is published four times a year as a print publication as well as, starting in 2027, Copyright Fixation: an online forum and podcast.

Editorial Team

We are pleased to have an editorial team made up of industry leaders, practitioners, scholars, and law students.  If you are a student, scholar and/or member of the Copyright Society and would like to be part of our editorial team, please email eic@copyrightsociety.org.

Our Process 

1. Our scholarly articles are peer-reviewed by our editorial team with both general knowledge and specialty and experience in the subject. You may submit an article directly to the Editor-in-Chief. Each article is reviewed by our Peer Review Board and/or our Co-Editor a particular issue. Here is the process if your article is accepted for publication.
2. We reformat and transform your article into Google Docs (no exception) for the editing procuess.
3. The Editor-in-Chief (and if applicable, co-editor(s) for that issue at a detailed level for coherence, support, argument, and structure. You review and make necessary changes, in consultation with the EIC.
4. Concurrently, our Copyright Society student fellows bluebook and review your article. WE DO NOT CITE CHECK. For our purposes, ideally the footnotes are already in bluebook formatting, and we are merely checking them. If you are not familar with bluebooking, just let us know, and our students can help.
5. Once the piece has been peer reviewed and the students have done their magic, and the author has approved the final draft version, we go into production.
6. You will receive a copy of the full issue as a PDF to review your article (and you are welcome to make comments on the other articles). These are formatting changes only. You send back your changes in an email with the page number of issue you have identified.
7. The issue goes up on the website and also is distributed for publication in print form and electronic form on various platforms. You are also free to distribute your individual article and the full issue on your personal, institutional, and other non-commercial websites.

If you are interested in submitting an article, please contact Elizabeth Townsend Gard with a proposal for an article at eic@copyrightsociety.gov

Journal Documents

Formatting Document. This document provides information on how each article, interview, and panel is formatted by the Journal of the Copyright Society.

Process Document: This is how we move through the editing and production process for the Journal.

Bluebooking Document (with Journal of the Copyright Society-related materials)

Coming Soon.