Call for Papers: LVI 2013: Law via the Internet Conference

The call for papers and presentation proposals has been issued for LVI 2013: Law via the Internet Conference, to be held 26-27 September 2013 on the Channel Island of Jersey.

The conference Website does not seem to state the deadline for submitting papers or proposals. If you know the submission deadline, please feel free to tell us in the comments to this post.

[UPDATE 11 February 2013: The conference organizers now say the submission deadline is 31 March 2013.]

Papers are invited on the topics covered by any of the seven tracks in which the conference program is divided:

• E-Learning: distance, blended, open, mobile, gaming, MOOCing and more?
• Online legal information – starting from scratch
• Legal knowledge in the age of the semantic web
• Communicating our work: journals, blogs and other ways of publishing about open access
• Privacy v open government in legal publishing
• Emerging patterns of information access and usage
• Technological development and free access to law

The conference Twitter account is @JerseyLVI2013 and the conference hashtag is #lvi2013

For details about the tracks, please see the track Websites.

For more details about the conference, please see the conference Website.

Palmirani et al., eds.: AI Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems: Papers from AICOL III

Professor Dr. Monica Palmirani, Professor Dr. Ugo Pagallo, Professor Dr. Pompeu Casanovas, and Professor Dr. Giovanni Sartor, have edited a new book entitled AI Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems – Models and Ethical Challenges for Legal Systems, Legal Language and Legal Ontologies, Argumentation and Software Agents (Springer, 2012).

The book contains revised selected papers from International Workshop AICOL-III, Held as Part of the 25th IVR Congress, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, August 15-16, 2011.

HT Professor Palmirani

Bell on the Future of Legal Research

Professor Dr. John Bell of the University of Cambridge has published The Future of Legal Research, Legal Information Management, 12(4), 314-317 (2012).

Here is the abstract:

This article is based on a presentation given by John Bell at the annual conference of The Society of Legal Scholars (SLS) held in Bristol in September 2012. His talk reflects the immediate challenges facing law schools, academic lawyers and the legal publishing industry in the light of the recent Finch Report and the subsequent response by the Government whereby it has adopted an open access policy to publicly funded research.’

Bruce Reports on LVI 2012 Workshop on Open Scientific Publishing and Communication on Law and ICT

A Workshop on Open Scientific Publishing and Communication on Law and ICT was held 10 October 2012 in Ithaca, New York, immediately following LVI 2012: The Law via the Internet Conference, held 7-9 October 2012, at the Legal Information Institute (LII), Cornell Law School, Ithaca, New York, USA. The workshop had the informal title of “Steve the Librarian.” Tom Bruce of the LII sends the following report on the workshop. Thanks to Tom for allowing me to repost his report:

Since I ended up acting as the informal “chair” of the meeting, I suppose I should be the one to fill everyone in. It was, in fact, a meeting of 8 or 10 people around a breakfast table at the Holiday Inn, and not a workshop in any ordinary sense. But it was the latest event in a chain of discussions around this subject that began at LVI in Florence, and continued through the LVI meetings in Durban and Hong Kong, sometimes in conference sessions, sometimes in the FALM business meetings, and sometimes in airport lounges. It is fair to say that this is a recurring topic and an important one.

We outlined three major needs in the field.

One (which I’ve pushed to the point of being a broken record on the subject) is the need for low-threshold, internal communication among the various subdisciplines that touch open access to law. We’ve taken on some of that in VoxPopulii, first under your capable leadership and now with Stephanie Davidson and Christine Kirchberger at the helm. It’s vitally necessary that legal informatics researchers learn about the needs of publishers, publishers about librarians, librarians about informatics, and social scientists about all of them (not a complete census but you see what I mean) and that the resulting literature be accessible to non-specialists in the field that is talking about itself. There is room for much more than VoxPopuLii here.

A second is for a publishing venue for people who are working on open access to legal information as researchers in various fields, particularly younger scholars. If you can agree for a moment that we might describe their fields as, for the most part, “law and…” fields, then the journals they now have available to them are all in the fields that are on the other side of the three dots. This has a distorting effect. The availability of very good open-journal software for electronic publication makes good alternatives possible. There is general agreement that because there are so many fields bordering what we all do there is a potentially difficult problem of defining boundaries for such a journal. Initial forays will thus focus pretty tightly on open access to law. Even that is potentially tricky, given that government information of many kinds might be eligible and useful, so firm editorial leadership is called for.

A third is for a comprehensive archive and index to existing work in the field, to be maintained as new stuff is added. One might describe its boundaries as being “all the stuff Rob Richards posts about” , with substantial work on mapping it having been done by you both in formal bibliographies and in blog posts and Twitter. We think there is the possibility of working either with an existing apparatus such as the physics arXiv, or with a purpose-built DSpace installation or some other repository.

Participants in the discussion included Pompeu Casanovas, Graham Greenleaf, Enrico Francesconi, Ginevra Peruginelli, James Lambert, John Heywood, Cicely Wilson, John Joergensen, Amy Taylor, and others whose names I apologize for not retrieving from my faulty memory.

Various individuals have been tasked with pursuing initial steps toward these objectives with the aim of having all or part in place by the time of the next LVI conference (tentatively believed to be in September 2013). We’ll post news as things become concrete.

Davidson on Open Access and Legal Scholarship

Professor Stephanie Davidson of the University of Illinois College of Law has posted Open Sesame, on the VoxPopuLII blog, published by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School.

In this post, Professor Davidson describes the current status of open access to scholarship in the U.S. — including issues such as mandates, repositories, and legislation respecting open access to federally funded research — and how legal scholars make use of and benefit from open access institutions. Professor Davidson highlights the open access scholarly repository of the Yale Law School Library, and the work of Donovan, Watson, and Bluh on legal institutional repositories.

For more information, please see the complete post.

Guarda on Open Access to Legal Scholarship and Open Archives

Dr. Paolo Guarda of Università degli Studi di Trento Facoltà di Giurisprudenza has posted Open Access to Legal Scholarship and Open Archives: Towards a Better Future? = L’Open Access per la dottrina giuridica e gli Open Archives: verso un futuro migliore? (Trento Law and Technology Research Group Research Paper no. 8, 2011).

This appears to be a version of the paper presented at the workshop: From Information to Knowledge: On Line Access to Legal Information, and published in Maria Angela Biasiotti and Sebastiano Faro (Eds.), From Information to Knowledge – Online Access to Legal Information: Methodologies, Trends and Perspectives (IOS, 2011).

Here is the abstract:

The logic of Open Access (OA) is gradually spreading in the scientific community, mainly thanks to the help of important areas of public libraries. OA basically describes a phenomenon that sees many scientific communities publishing through the Internet their results (papers, articles, books, etc.) on archives accessible to anyone (and without payment of a price). OA seems to have the possibility to become a very powerful tool for the dissemination of scientific knowledge.

As part of the general phenomenon called “Transfer of Knowledge” (broader category than the more famous “Technology Transfer”), which sees universities and research centers increasingly interested in showing in the market the quality of their scientific production through various activities aimed at exploiting the foreground of their researches (IPRs, licenses, spin-off, etc.), OA plays a pivotal role: it could make transfer of knowledge – previously conveyed (under payment) by private intermerdiaries – more transparent, fluid, and accessible to anyone.

Despite the initial delay, the OA movement is quickly growing in importance for legal scholarship. Nonetheless, the institutional arrangements and the technological features of OA to legal scholarship are variegated and pose a vast array of problems.

OA to legal scholarship changes the form of the legal publication – e.g., we face new kinds of publications such as blog posts or Wikipedia articles – and shifts the “quality selection” function of the publication system from traditional intermediaries (publishers, learning societies, editorial boards, etc.) to new ones (e.g., search engines, social software, Open Archives, etc.) and readers.

In this perspective, a prominent issue is represented by the Open Archives. Open Archives, as well as other OA tools (OA journals), increase the reputation of authors and improve the future impact of their articles. A vast literature – although referring to other subjects – shows that papers deposited in OA repositories are cited more often than those which are not.

Moreover, the OA repositories enable a new form of evaluation process. On one hand, it is possible to develop innovative bibliometric indicators. On the other hand, through them you can easily trace the entire life of a scientific product: for example, the OA repositories will allow the display of all the evolution stages of an article from the presentation at a conference to its final version.

Given the enormous power of the Net and the rise of these OA repositories, we are still suffering – especially within the Italian context – the low number of uploads and the lack of innovative tools fit to navigate through the OA legal materials. The governance of legal Open Archives should pay attention to the following main features: interoperability, redundancy, multilingualism, evaluation criteria and tools, policies.

These kinds of issues can be solved only by using an interdisciplinary law and technology approach which clarifies the various, complex aspects of the relationship between Open Archives and legal scholarship.

HT @oatp and @aabibliographer.

Slides from 2011 ITTIG-CNR Workshop: From Information to Knowledge: On Line Access to Legal Information

Slides have been posted for presentations at From Information to Knowledge: On Line Access to Legal Information, a workshop organised by ITTIG-CNR in conjunction with Festival d’Europa 2011, on 6 May 2011, in Florence, Italy.

Full text of revised versions of many of the papers has been published in: Maria Angela Biasiotti and Sebastiano Faro (Eds.), From Information to Knowledge – Online Access to Legal Information: Methodologies, Trends and Perspectives (IOS, 2011).

Here is a list of the papers presented, with links to slides, abstracts, and revised full text where available:

• Giovanni Sartor, European University Institute: Access to legislation in the semantic web (click here for slides; click here for abstract and revised full text);
• Cedric Chailloux, Publications Office of the European Union – EUR-Lex Unit: The new EUR-Lex: improvement and redesign (Click here for slides; click here for abstract and revised full text, by Els Breedstraet);
• Carol Tullo, The National Archives – Information Policy and Services – UK: Online access to UK legislation: strategy and structure (Click here for slides; click here for abstract and revised full text);
• Filippo Donati, University of Florence: Access to legal information in the European Union (Click here for abstract and revised full text);
• G. Boella, L. Humphreys, P. Rossi, and L. van der Torre: Eunomos, a legal document management system based on legislative XML and ontologies (Click here for slides; click here for abstract and revised full text);
• K.E. Petersen: Experiences with “Lex Dania Live” (Click here for slides; click here for abstract and revised full text);
• B. Bassi: Automatic classification of documents for the Library of the Italian Chamber of Deputies (Click here for slides; click here for abstract and revised full text);
• Melih Karakullukçu: Proper treatment of gaps in legal data and in electronic legal research (Click here for abstract and revised full text);
• Marc van Opijnen: European Case-law identifier: a short history and the broad outlook (Click here for slides; click here for abstract and revised full text);
• G. Damele, M. Dogliani., A. Mastropaolo, F. Pallante and D.P. Radicioni: On legal argumentation tecniques: towards a systematic approach (Click here for slides; click here for abstract and revised full text.);
• D. Bourcier and M. Fernández-Barrera: Challenges regarding legal metadata. IP licensing and management of different cognitive levels in the Web 2.0 (Click here for slides; click here for abstract and revised full text);
• G. Peruginelli, D. Tiscornia, G. Greenleaf, A. Mowbray and P. Chung: A comprehensive free access legal information system for Europe (Click here for slides; click here for abstract and revised full text);
• R. Caso, P. Guarda and V. Moscon: Open Access to legal scholarship and Open Archives: towards a better future? (Click here for slides; click here for abstract and revised full text).

Danner on Transnational Law, International Law, and Open Access to Law and Legal Scholarship

Senior Associate Dean Richard A. Danner of the Duke University School of Law, has posted two new papers on open access to legal information, on SSRN:

Open Access to Legal Scholarship: Dropping the Barriers to Discourse and Dialogue (2011), forthcoming in Journal of International Commercial Law and Technology. Abstract:

This article focuses on the importance of free and open access to legal scholarship and commentary on the law. It argues that full understanding of authoritative legal texts requires access to informed commentary as well as to the texts of the law themselves, and that free and open access to legal commentary will facilitate cross-border dialogue and foster international discourse in law. The paper discusses the obligations of scholars and publishers of legal commentary to make their work as widely accessible as possible. Examples of institutional and disciplinary repositories for legal scholarship are presented, as are the possible impacts of such initiatives as the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship.

Defining International Law Librarianship in an Age of Multiplicity, Knowledge, and Open Access to Law (2011). Abstract:

Many law librarians are experts in international law and legal research. The concept of ‘international law librarianship,’ however, encompasses something more than a field of study in which a group of experts practice their profession. In the broader sense, the idea suggests a common calling, similar interests, and goals shared by librarians with a range of specialties beyond international law, working in all types of law libraries. What commonalities create and sustain the concept of international law librarianship? This paper suggests that they can be found in: law librarians’ common need to respond to the ‘multiplicity’ of information sources facing twenty-first century legal researchers; the development and nurturing of a shared base of professional knowledge; and a common commitment to work toward ensuring free and open access to legal information globally.

HT @cottinstef.

Hart on Indexing Open Access Law Journals

Edward T. Hart of the University of Florida Legal Information Center has published Indexing Open Access Law Journals…or Maybe Not, International Journal of Legal Information, 38(1), 19-42 (2010) (article 5). Here is a summary:

[W]hat would be the results of a …study of the law journals listed in the [Directory of Open Access Journals, DOAJ]? That is what I set out to discover. [In this article] are:

• a brief description of scholarly open access publishing and the Directory,
• a look at the law journals listed in the DOAJ,
• standards for selection of journals for indexing in the four primary indexes used in United States legal research,
• results of the study of inclusion of DOAJ law journals in these four indexes, and
• a conclusion that considers what the impact of indexing – or not indexing – open access journals means for legal research.

Open Access Law Journals: Request for Input

I’m updating a list of open access law journals:

• Click here for the list in .xlsx format;
• Click here for the list in .ods format.

On this list I’m including legal periodicals that fit the definition of “open access” adopted by the signers of the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship.

If you know of open access law journals that are not on this list, I’d be grateful if you would please list them and their URLs in the comments to this post.

Click here for resources about open access to legal resources.

Click here for Dean Danner’s recent article about open access to legal scholarship.

Click here for Edward Hart’s new article on indexing open access law journals.

Click here for Dean Danner’s recent Berkman Center presentation about open access to legal scholarship.

Click here for video of the recent Duke Law School conference on the Durham Statement and open access to legal scholarship.

Thanks!