Chief Editors’ Introduction: Vol 3(3)

law legislation

On 22 September 2012, journalist Jill Meagher was brutally raped and murdered in a Melbourne street after walking home by herself at night. This murder struck a chord with the local community with thousands marching with flowers, a familiar symbol of community sentiment, to express a shared sense of grief and communal victimisation. Sanja Milivojecvic and Alyce McGovern, the authors of 'The Death of Jill Meagher: Crime and Punishment on Social Media', highlight the significance of the agenda-setting role of social media in this context. They point to the manifold problems of trial by social media and 'call for more audacious and critical engagement by criminologists and social scientists in addressing the challenges posed by new technologies'. Regardless of the place, the context, the culture, the continent or time of day, safety from sexual violence is a basic social democratic right. , the product of a long-term law reform process, was amended following talk-back radio shock jock outcry over just three cases. The authors argue that the amendments 'are premature, unnecessary, create complexity and confusion, and, quite possibly, will have unintended consequences: in short, they are a mess'. The reversal of bail law reform measures in NSW illustrates the inordinate influence of the irrational (tabloids, shock jocks, using retired politicians to invent quick fixes, and so on) over what should be considerably more rational policy and law reform processes. Moreover, this case illustrates 'the political failure to understand and defend fundamental legal principles that benefit us all and are central to the maintenance of a democratic society and the rule of law'. The article concludes with suggestions for how more reasoned and balanced outcomes could be produced in future. The editors released this article in advance of publication given its topicality to current parliamentary debates and note that in the process the journal was mentioned in Hansard. This bears testament to the real world relevance of the innovative scholarship published in this journal. This impact is only possible because of the open access timely mode of publishing supported by this journal. Aboriginal Lands Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (ALRA), the NTA does not offer a right of veto to Aboriginal parties; instead, they have a right to negotiate with developers, which has in practice meant very little leverage in negotiations for native title parties'. The failure of the legislative protection of Indigenous peoples has been exploited by some in the corporate mining sector, through campaigns of 'vexatious litigation designed to break the resistance of native title parties, as demonstrated by the experience of Aboriginal corporations in the iron ore-rich Pilbara region of Western Australia'. Like several of the articles that precede this one, this article also illustrates how the politics of law reform and its implementation -in this case Native Titlecan be counter-productive to the stated aims of the legislators. Who would have ever thought that the Native Title Act 1993 could be used maliciously against Indigenous bodies to undermine their rights? Read this important ground breaking analysis to find out how.

International Editorial Board
The journal has a distinguished International Editorial Board of 36 leading scholars from law and criminology from 15 countries and five continents. Nationalities represented on the Board include 14 from Australia and 22 from United Kingdom, United States, Canada, New Zealand, Spain, Argentina, China, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Macau, Netherlands, Norway and Poland. Again we thank our dedicated international editorial board for their largely unrecognised hard work.

Circulation
Since its first issue -Vol 1(1) -was released in November 2012, the journal has published 54 articles over seven issues, including this issue -Vol 3(3) -for December 2014 (that is, three issues per year), consistently meeting publication schedules. Over one quarter of the articles have been authored by international scholars from United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Belgium, Germany, New Zealand, The Netherlands and Spain. In the two years since the journal first appeared online, there have been 55,851 abstract views and 37,142 full pdf downloads.
Julia Quilter's article on 'One Punch Laws, Mandatory Minimums and Alcohol Fuelled as an Aggravating Factor ' has achieved a record of 8,246 abstract views and 3,931 full pdf downloads since its publication in March this year.

Data bases and metadata harvesting
The journal is included in a number of prestigious journal data bases which have assisted its circulation and international reputation. The databases include: Ulrich; Proquest; Australian Policy Online (APO); DOAJ; EBSCO; National Library of Australia's Trove; Google Scholar; ARC Excellence in Research Australia 2014 Journals List. The journal meets all criteria for inclusion in Scopus and Web of Science (Social Science Citation Index) and is currently in the cue for assessment. The journal is also supported by CrossRef.
We encourage all authors to quote the DOI in referencing any of the articles in this journal to assist the extraction of metadata harvesting. This in turn assists the circulation and citation of articles published in the journal.

Future submissions
We believe in the social democratic free flow of information and use a Creative Commons license, so you can republish our articles for free, online or in print, as long as you acknowledge the source. Authors also retain their own copyright, something commercial publishers either don't allow or charge you for handsomely. We are also committed to ethics in publishing and only publish original high quality innovative scholarship of interest to our large and growing international audience. If you would like your scholarship to be part of this new digital world of free but high quality knowledge, we invite you to submit to the journal, keeping within its stated themes.