19 Oct 2021
The Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) is an open and free access publisher, which is the most relied upon provider of legal information in Australia. The core AustLII service contains an integrated collection of nearly 900 databases of primary and secondary legal materials that supports distinctive features such as note-up of legislation and case law together with access to the international LawCite citator. AustLII facilitates access to much online content that is not available elsewhere, including over 150 law journals and legal scholarship databases, the largest collection of free and open access journals in the subject domain of law, and served nearly 20 million journal article downloads in 2020.
Australian university libraries currently spend significant amounts on subscriptions to the main commercial legal services, via traditional subscription models. In this presentation AustLII’s Philip Chung & Andrew Mowbray will discuss how AustLII is seeking to develop a ‘post-transformative agreement’ with libraries that will sustainably fund open access publishing in the subject domain of law, leading to a new economics for open access and commercial publication generally.
CAUL’s Angus Cook & Open Access Australia Chair, Martin Borchert wrapped up the webinar & Ginny Barbour posed questions from the audience.
Associate Professor Philip Chung
Philip Chung is Associate Professor of Law at UNSW. He is Executive Director of AustLII and associated projects (including AsianLII, CommonLII and WorldLII). AustLII is a joint facility of UNSW and UTS Faculties of Law. Philip manages the staff and resources of AustLII and jointly oversees the technical development of AustLII’s projects. He holds degrees in Economics and Law from the University of Sydney, with honours in Computer Science and Operations Research as well as a PhD in Law from UNSW. His research interests include legal information systems, computerisation of law, and legal AI.
Professor Andrew Mowbray
Professor Andrew Mowbray joined UTS in 1986 as a Lecturer with degrees in Computing Science and Law. He took a national leadership role in the computerization of law and the development of computerized legal research from the late 1980s onwards. Andrew was appointed Professor of Law and Information Technology in 2003. Professor Mowbray was a central figure in the creation of AustLII. He has been a principal software author and technical director and is currently AustLII Co-Director. Among other pieces of software that are widely used across the Free Access to Law Movement, Andrew is responsible for the development of the open source free text engine ino, and the Law Cite legal citator.
Angus Cook CAUL Director, Content Procurement
Angus Cook joined CAUL as Director, Content Procurement, in January 2020 bringing with him many years of commercial experience working with content and systems vendors. Angus has worked for commercial publishers including Springer Nature and gained experience with legal publishing while working at Thomson Reuters. While working for OCLC, Angus gained experience in services for library management, resource sharing and authentication.