U.S. News To Publish Law Faculty Scholarly Impact Ranking In 2021

After announcing that it would publish in 2019 a faculty scholarly impact ranking based on citations in HeinOnline (February 2019 FAQ; May 2019 Additional Guidance), U.S. News & World Report on Friday informed law schools that the ranking will be published in 2021:

I hope that you and your law school are doing well.

As you may know, U.S. News has been working to create a law school scholarly impact ranking. We last wrote about this decision in May 2019. We are continuing to work with HeinOnline, as the source of the data, based on their industry leading collection of legal publications. In Fall 2019 and earlier this year, HeinOnline obtained a list of your law school’s faculty from the 2019-2020 academic year for this project.

U.S. News’ goal is to publish the law school scholarly impact ranking in 2021.

To be sure that we use your current faculty at Pepperdine University in the ranking, U.S. News has asked HeinOnline to verify your law school’s full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty, as of Fall 2020 by December 18,2020. HeinOnline will be reaching out to their contacts at Pepperdine University to obtain this information.

If your law school has any questions about preparing for this update, please visit this Knowledge Base article for more information.

U.S. News thanks you and your law school for working with HeinOnline on this important update.

Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:

• U.S. News To Publish Law Faculty Scholarly Impact Ranking Based On 2014-2018 Citations (Feb. 13, 2019)
• U.S. News FAQ: Law School Scholarly Impact Rankings (Feb. 14, 2019)
• More Coverage Of The U.S. News Law Faculty Scholarly Impact Rankings (Feb. 15, 2019)
• Robert Anderson (Pepperdine), Some Contrarian Thoughts On The U.S. News Faculty Scholarly Impact Rankings (Feb. 18, 2019)
• Law Prof Commentary On The U.S. News Faculty Scholarly Impact Rankings (Feb. 19, 2019)
• U.S. News Updates FAQ On Law School Scholarly Impact Rankings To Address Inclusion Of Non-Doctrinal Faculty (Feb. 21, 2019)
• Joe Lawprofblawg (Anonymous Professor, Top 100 Law School) & Darren Bush (Houston), A Hilarious (In The Footnotes) Yet Serious (In The Text) Discussion Of Law Reviews And Law Professors (Feb. 26, 2019)
• U.S. News Updates FAQ On Law School Scholarly Impact Rankings To Address Inclusion Of Non-Doctrinal Faculty (Feb. 27, 2019)
• Derek Muller (Pepperdine), Gaming The New U.S. News Citation Rankings (Mar. 6, 2019)
• Jeff Sovern (St. John's), How The U.S. News Scholarly Impact Rankings Could Hurt Niche Subjects (March 11, 2019)
• Ted Sichelman (San Diego), A Defense And Explanation Of The U.S. News 'Citation' Ranking (March 20, 2019)
• U.S. News Offers More Guidance, Meeting With Law School Deans On New Scholarly Impact Rankings (May 2, 2019)
• The U.S. News Citation Ranking Is A 'Rigged Metrics Game' That 'Imperils Legal Academia' (Oct. 10, 2019)
• Heald & Sichelman: The Top 100 Law School Faculties In Citations (Hein) And Impact (SSRN Downloads) (Nov. 11, 2019)
• Sisk: Citations — 'A Valid, If Imperfect, Proxy For Faculty Scholarly Impact On A National Scale' (Nov. 11, 2019)
• Bob Morse Discusses The U.S. News Law School Rankings Today At Texas A&M Virtual Conference (June 5, 2020)