What is a preemption check?
Before you begin research on an article topic, you must determine whether the topic has already been covered by another article. This process is called a preemption check.
A thorough preemption check allows you to proceed with confidence that you are analyzing a novel issue and increases your chances for publication.
When should you perform a preemption check?
Preemption checks are performed after choosing a potential topic but before beginning to conduct in-depth research. Keep in mind that the preemption check itself is often a good start to research.
If there is a substantial amount of time between your initial preemption check and when you submit your article for publication, you may also want to perform a preemption check before submitting.
A proper preemption check requires you to search many different databases because the various databases cover different content. Searching a variety of databases ensures that you are doing a thorough check. Follow these simple steps to conduct a thorough preemption check.
Step 1. Construct a list of terms and synonyms to describe your topic
Use a legal thesaurus to identify alternative words used to describe your topic. Many legal thesaurus are available in
Once you start your preemption check, you might notice terms of art or other language patterns used to describe your topic. You may need to revise your preemption check searches to account for any alternative terms.
Follow the ITAC process to develop search terms for preemption checks:
Issue defined in legal terms.
Terms that are necessary to the legal issue.
Alternatives that are reasonable.
Connectors to join the terms in a reasonable way
Step 2. Organize your preemption check
To keep track of your preemption check searches, keep a running list of the search terms.
You should maintain a record of all journal article citations in your search results that you feel need further investigation.
Step 3. Search a variety of databases for articles on your topic
1. A full-text law reviews and journals database on Westlaw & LexisNexis
Search the full-text Law Reviews and Journals database on Westlaw or on LexisNexis. You should run multiple searches using your terms list.
2. The HeinOnline Law Journal Library
3. Index to Legal Periodicals (ILP)
4. Current Index to Legal Periodicals (CILP)
5. SSRN for working papers on your topic
6. Google Scholar, JSTOR, or ProQuest for multidisciplinary articles
If your topic is likely to be addressed in non-legal journals, check databases of such journals.
The Tech Libraries also subscribe to JSTOR and ProQuest, which are multi-disciplinary databases.
If you are interested in the full-text of an article found in a resource that is not available through the Texas Tech Libraries, please see a Reference Librarian for inter-library loan information.
Generally, searching all of these databases for your topic will be sufficient to perform a thorough preemption check.
When searching, if you find that your topic has been covered, it could be preempted, and you may need to revise the focus of your topic to analyze the issue in a new light. If you are unable to find a new angle, you may need to find a new topic altogether. These issues depend on the specific articles that you find during your preemption check.
If you find that there is an article that discusses your topic, but it is old, and there has been substantial change in the area, you may not be preempted because you could update the issue. But if you find a large number of articles analyzing your topic from many different angles, it may be hard to convince a journal that your article is worth publishing. A journal may think that the topic has been overdone and pass on publication.
After running a preemption check, you can ensure that you are not preempted during your writing process by setting up alerts related to your topic. Setting up alerts keeps you abreast of the most recent developments in the law that may help strengthen your paper. It is recommended that you set up alerts on all of these resources to stay as current as possible, several sites allow you to set up alerts.
