Figure 1. IJDL sole authorship and co-authorship over three periods.
Sole-authored publications have fallen from nearly nine-out-of-ten in the first 33 issues to a little over two-thirds in the most recent 34 issues. Co-authorship almost tripled between the first 33 issues and the second 33 before falling back a little in the third tranche as multiple authorship increased (with papers authored by three people almost doubling while papers authored by a greater number, while still marking up a small proportion, increased nearly 10-fold from just over 0.6% to around 6%).
Figure 5. Frequency of characteristics appearing in the abstracts of the IJDL 1995-2025.
From this it can be inferred that there is a wide coverage but disability, sex and race are the most covered topics over the years, with disability sustaining a marked increase from 1995 to 2005 in the following two decades. While race looks to have fallen back each decade, if the ethnic and national origins phrasings are included the decline is less marked. A greater focus on religion and belief, as protection evolved, and in abstracts mentioning pregnant women/pregnancy is also marked.
2/2 Inspired in part by @jenhendry.bsky.social, @n-creutzfeldt.bsky.social and @cmboulanger.bsky.social’s more detailed piece on the Journal of Law & Society’s 50th, the snapshots look at contributors and content such as the below
#EqualityLaw #AcademicPublishing #LawSky #OpenAccess
#IJDL30