The Institute for Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) has launched OBserving Law, the IALS Open Book Service for Law, being developed as part of the School of Advanced Study’s Humanities Digital Library open access book publishing initiative.
OBserving Law aims to provide a new open access monograph publishing service for legal researchers. Titles will be made freely available in PDF and epub formats, with single volume and separate chapter versions. A print on demand paperback purchase option will be offered as standard with a hardback choice for libraries and others that may prefer that format.
The service will look to enrich the digital versions with live hyperlinks and other opportunities to expand the online presence through discussion and commentary. The aspiration is for OBserving Law to support and be supported by the wider legal research community and to help authors reach and engage with wider communities.
Electronic Signatures in Law
The first title to be published under the IALS Open Book Service is the 4th edition of Stephen Mason’s Electronic Signatures in Law. The full Open Access PDF and the chargeable print on demand and epub versions of the book are available now from the IALS website; other facilities, including the separate chapter versions, will be available through the new Humanities Digital Library platform from January 2017.
Stephen says: “By joining the OBserving Law, IALS Open Book Service for Law project, I want to recruit the wider community to take part in the books. The aim, if successful, is to ask anybody with an interest, whether judge, lawyer, legal academic, law student or practitioners, academics, students of technical subjects that are relevant, to engage in the text and to help keep it up-to-date. In return, every person who contributes to this process (that helps in other than a superficial way) – a process that will be moderated – will be acknowledged in the next edition. We need to be able to turn to authoritative texts – and why not the authority of the moderated interested?”
Stephen is a leading authority on electronic signatures and electronic evidence, having advised global corporations and governments on these topics. He is also the founder and editor of the international open source journal the Digital Evidence and Electronic Signature Law Review. Stephen is an Associate Research Fellow at the IALS.
This fourth edition of his well-established practitioner text sets out what constitutes an electronic signature; the form an electronic signature can take; and discusses the issues relating to evidence – illustrated by analysis of relevant case law and legislation from a wide range of common law and civil law jurisdictions.
Electronic Signatures in Law, 4th edition, by Stephen Mason, is available from the IALS website.
