한국과 일본의 법학 학술지에 관한 비교 연구 - 학술논문의 질 담보를 중심으로 -

This study presents a comparative analysis of systems and management of law journals in both Korea and Japan, based on a question whether or not the rating system on law journals in Korea contributes to the development of quality legal research. Chapter 1 presents a general standard of evaluating scholarly journals. Scholarly journals are evaluated in terms of the quality (academic level, research value, etc.) of their articles. Law journals are evaluated on the basis of similar criteria. Chapter 2 examines the rating system on whole scholarly journals and its management on law journals and indicates problems of the system and management. While Korean policy on the management of scholarly journals has been successful in increasing the number of law journals, it has failed to contribute to the improvement of their quality. It has been indicated that the policy has difficult to assure the quality of law journal articles. Chapter 3 shows the present situation of Japanese law journals and inquires into their quality control of articles. Japan has neither rating system nor systematic evaluations of law journal quality like Korea. Even peer review of articles is only partially conducted in Japan. How do Japanese law journals assure quality of articles? This study makes comprehensive list of Japanese law journals and categorizes them as commercial journals, journals of academic association, bulletins of universities, etc. Then, this study inquires their way to control quality of articles, based on the result of the comprehensive listing of law journals and an exploratory survey of law researchers. Japanese law journals enforce article quality control through selection of authors by editors of publishing companies and editorial boards comprised of well-established law researchers, a partial peer review system, community activities in academic societies, and the overall academic job appointment process. The quality of Japanese articles, controlled through these means, operates as the most important indicator in evaluating law researchers. Thus, Japanese law journals attempt improving levels of the quality of their articles not through the rating system on journals which Korea adopts but through other means such as community activities in academic societies, while effect of Korean policy to assure the quality of articles through increasing the number of articles published in scholarly journals including law journals has been decreasing to the limit. This means it is time to change direction of the Korean rating system on law journals. The authors argue that Korea needs a reform of systems and management regarding law journals to improve the quality of articles in taking the character of the law research into consideration, even though the authors are not able to evaluate the present quality of Korean law journal articles. The means to reform the authors argue is presented in Chapter 4. If the present rating system is maintained, the authors suggest a system which evaluate only formal requirements of law journals and leave evaluation on quality or academic value to autonomy of the academic marketplace. The authors argue, however, that it is better to phase out the existing system regarding evaluation on law journals and leave it to autonomy of the academic marketplace in order to develop Korean law journals into ones competitive with Japanese peers at least.