Schiess Rütimann, Patricia M.

English

<intR>²Dok

From a Small State for a GlobalReadershipPatricia Schiess 2021-12-22T13:54:58In spring 2016, the Liechtenstein Institute launched verfassung.li, the onlinecommentary on the Constitution of the Principality of Liechtenstein. To date, it is theonly commentary on the Constitution of Liechtenstein and – to our knowledge – theonly open access commentary on a constitution in the German-speaking world.The Liechtenstein Institute was founded in 1986 by a private initiative, and isstill supported today by a non-profit association. Prior to the founding of theLiechtenstein Institute, no regular academic work had been undertaken onLiechtenstein’s constitutional and administrative law.Better alone on the worldwide web than with afriendly publisher in a local bookshopThere are numerous anthologies, doctoral theses and contributions on constitutionaland administrative law issues in Liechtenstein. However, there is still no textbookon Liechtenstein constitutional law. The Liechtenstein Institute wanted to remedythis situation with a scholarly analysis of the Constitution, but Liechtenstein is toosmall for scholarly books on its national law to be sold at a profit. Furthermore, theLiechtenstein Institute has pursued an open access strategy for some time. We feelparticularly committed to this because, as a state-supported research institution, wehave a public mandate. Studies published by the Liechtenstein Institute itself areavailable to download for free on its website. A database lists all pieces of work byits researchers, including those publications that are not open access. We want ourresearch to be seen and used by everyone.For this reason, from the very beginning we have not only had lawyers in mind asreaders of our commentary, but also journalists, teachers and politicians. Theseindividuals would be unlikely to buy a book about the Constitution, and even ifthey did, they would probably be overburdened by all the information and the longfootnotes. But if access is free, and it is possible to search easily with keywordsand obtain further information with a simple click (e.g. on the earlier wording of theConstitution and on judgments), then – we assume – they will visit the website.And from personal communications we know that they do. However, this does notchange the fact that the texts contained in the commentary are written according tothe standards for jurisprudential publications and thus presuppose a certain priorunderstanding.We also expect a certain interest in the Liechtenstein Constitution from abroad. Thisis because Liechtenstein’s Constitution has special features due to its combinationof direct democracy and monarchy, and also because the Liechtenstein Constitution- 1 -of 1921 contains provisions that are based on constitutional articles from Austria andSwitzerland. Moreover, the Liechtenstein Constitution is an old constitution, whichhas taken over a number of provisions from its predecessor of 1862. For foreignlawyers, political scientists and historians who are interested in some aspects of theLiechtenstein Constitution, it would probably be difficult to buy a book on this subjectpublished in Liechtenstein or in Switzerland. In addition, publishers are emptyingtheir warehouses faster and faster, and many books are only available in bookshopsfor a few years.If alone, then with full responsibility: MediaWikiinstead of a legal publisherBefore the launch of the site, we looked at various options, including working withlegal publishers. For cost reasons, and in order to be free to decide whether thereshould be a printed version of the commentary one day, we opted for the MediaWikisolution of a local company. This company had successfully designed websites,but had no experience in legal publications. This turned out to be an advantage inthat its management listened to us, as they wanted to understand precisely whatwe needed. They realised that we expected a cost-effective solution that would beeasy to use both by ourselves and by our readers. We immediately understood theirproposal to design the website according to the same principle as Wikipedia and touse open source. The structure of the website is such that we could also use it forother law commentaries. Although we have taken on the maintenance of severalwebsites in the meantime, we do not publish any other commentaries.It is tedious when texts posted online include many references that are themselvesnot freely accessible. Or, to put it another way: an online commentary only makessense if it is possible to work with links. This can be done easily in Liechtenstein:All of Liechtenstein’s laws are freely accessible online, as are the government’smotions to parliament and the minutes of parliamentary debates. The collectionof officially published judgments is also accessible free of charge. The NationalLibrary makes available scholarly publications of the Liechtenstein PolitischeSchriften (LPS) series, older newspapers and other publications. Materials on thehistory of Liechtenstein have also been electronically accessible for some time.Precisely because the Liechtenstein Constitution is 100 years old, it is important forus to show its history and development since 1921. The historical encyclopaediaof Liechtenstein has been published online by the Liechtenstein Institute, and isconstantly being supplemented with further contributions.- 2 -Do scientific works published exclusively onlineenjoy the same reputation as texts published by atraditional book publisher?We have asked ourselves this question and believe that we can answer it – at leastfor our commentary – with an emphatic “yes”. However, we have taken variousmeasures to be able to provide proof of quality.From the very beginning we have had an academic monitoring committee composedof around 10 professors, judges and lawyers from Liechtenstein, Switzerland andAustria. Members of the monitoring committee review the texts before they go online.In the first few years, responsibility for the online commentary lay with a renownedprofessor of law who has written many commentaries himself: Univ.-Prof. Dr. PeterBussjäger is a judge at the State Court of the Principality of Liechtenstein (theConstitutional Court of Liechtenstein). Since Peter Bussjäger moved to the Universityof Innsbruck full time in February 2018, I have been responsible for verfassung.li.I began my academic career at the University of Zurich, and have worked as anauthor on the commentary from the very beginning.We were helped by the fact that the editor, the Liechtenstein Institute, is alreadyknown beyond the small circle of legal scholars. The more extensively and frequentlythat verfassung.li is cited in judgments of the Liechtenstein courts, as well as inpieces on Liechtenstein law in domestic and foreign publications, the better. It isquite possible that we have been helped in this by the small-scale conditions in thecountry, plus the lack of a competing product.Whether the many visitors to our commentary who simply read up on somethingwithout quoting it later give any thought at all to the quality of the commentary and toits reputation, we do not know. We can only assume that they are satisfied with whatthey read: Many of them stay longer on the website, with 40% of visitors clicking onmore than one page.ChallengesIn the beginning, we had hoped to post articles on current judgments. Due to alack of resources, however, this could not be done. Therefore, we decided to onlycommunicate with the public when new commentaries were posted. And we haveto refrain from mentioning anniversaries (in 2021 e.g. the 100 year anniversaryof the Constitution or the unsuccessful vote on women’s suffrage in 1971) or newpublications on Liechtenstein constitutional law. In this respect, we make too littleuse of the possibilities offered by online publications. Our regular readers (courts,administration and members of the legal profession) accept that our capacity islimited. If they had to pay to access the commentaries, readers’ expectations wouldcertainly be higher. In this case, they would probably expect our commentaries to beregularly updated.- 3 -Comparative Research on small states is carried out in English. However, theinformation in English on verfassung.li is only rudimentary. We do not know whethervisitors to the website whose first language is English who come across the onlinecommentary subsequently read further articles using translation tools. In ourevaluation of the months August to October 2021, however, we saw that almost12% of visits were made with English as the browser language. If we published thecommentary through a German-speaking publishing house, no one would questionwhy there are not more texts in English, but if you go global, you start to think aboutthe expectations of readers from foreign-language countries.An online commentary ties up resources of the editor. Above all, it needs people towork on the project for years, whether they are developing the content further or atleast ensuring its continuity from a technical point of view. It seems neither easiernor more difficult to find authors for an open access online commentary than forany other publication. However, printed works give entitlement to compensationfrom ProLitteris (the Swiss Authors’ Rights Society for Literature), which is alsoresponsible for Liechtenstein authors. This entitlement does not apply to texts thatare made available for free online, even on a platform such as verfassung.li. Thisrule of ProLitteris indicates that open access published academic texts are still – atleast in the eyes of certain stakeholders – of less value than those that appear inprint.No regretsThe Liechtenstein Institute has no regrets about making its commentary on theLiechtenstein Constitution open access and online only. On the contrary: openaccess publications seem to be particularly well suited to small academic institutionsand small jurisdictions. Too few books would be sold domestically to make printingworthwhile. When travelling abroad or working with students, we can recommendverfassung.li unreservedly without forcing anyone to spend any money.It seems to us that a prerequisite for an online publication to be successful in thelong term is that it is embedded in an open access strategy by the editor. Only ifreaders are referred to other freely accessible online sources in the text do theyreally have an advantage.We have deliberately decided against working with a publishing house, optinginstead to use open source software. This means that we take care of everything.In return, we have complete freedom to determine the future fate of our onlinecommentary.- 4 -

From a Small State for a Global Readership

https://intr2dok.vifa-recht.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/mir_derivate_00011474/From_a_Small_State_for_a_Global_Readership.pdf

From a Small State for a Global Readership

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

<intR>²Dok