Both the Kluwer Arbitration and Competition Law platforms are run by Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S., ‘a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the healthcare, tax and accounting, governance, risk and compliance, and legal and regulatory sectors.’ In our experience, contact in the United Kingdom with Wolters Kluwer has greatly improved in recent years. We have our own representative in the UK and this has certainly enhanced communication and allowed us to be better informed about new products, including the two platforms reviewed in this article.
KLUWER ARBITRATIONFootnote 1
The Kluwer Arbitration platform is an online resource for international arbitration research. Some content is published in association with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA) and the Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA).
At the time of writing, this platform contained around 360 arbitration-related e-books. These are predominantly titles published by Wolters Kluwer; however, some e-books available on the platform are originally published by Oxford University Press (OUP). In addition to e-books, the platform provides access to 20 journals and one loose-leaf, which focusses mostly on international arbitration.
Browsing using the title option.
The vast collection of e-books represents good value for money in comparison to purchasing individual printed books. As a result, Inns of Court members now have access to a wider range of resources which we would otherwise not be able to offer. Having all these resources in one place also means that they can be searched simultaneously – obviously, this is not an option with printed books.
New editions but also new titles are added gradually during the year for no extra charge. However, the old editions, once superseded, are no longer available. Even though this practice is relatively widespread across legal platforms, it poses a problem for us as previous editions of textbooks are still well-used by our members.
In addition to e-books and e-journals, the platform contains over 3,000 awards and ICC cases, some arbitration-related legislation and court decisions. There are also two blogs as part of the platform which can be accessed even without the need of having a subscription – Kluwer Arbitration blog and Kluwer Mediation blog. Additionally, it is possible to upgrade the service for lawyers specialising in international arbitration, and gain access to the Arbitrator Intelligence and Dispute Resolution Data modules.
The ease of the search
There is an option to browse as well as search materials. A user can separately browse books, journals and new content or can browse by titles, awards, court decisions, jurisdictions, organisations. Another option is to browse by Analytics (shown below). However, this function is not part of our package and it requires a subscription to the Dispute Resolution Data module. This tool provides access to data sets and statistical information on case types and geographic regions, as well as insight into trends in international commercial arbitration and mediation.
Browsing court decisions.
Publication information, tables of contents and their covers are displayed when browsing e-books. It is possible to search directly within the book. Additionally, you can download and print individual chapters as well as e-mail them as a link or as a PDF attachment. During one session up to 20 documents are allowed to be e-mailed. All copies provided are in their electronic format, they are not presented as scanned copies of the print version.
Contents listing for an e-book, Competition Law of the European Union.
The search across all materials is relatively easy and can be immediately narrowed down by various filters, such as author, jurisdiction, time period and content type. Basic Boolean operators (and, or, not, near, etc.) can be also used to make the search more precise.
Entering a search term.
Other players in the field
A number of other commercial platforms also exist which focus on arbitration law. For example, JURIS Arbitration LawFootnote 2 which is a database covering US but also international arbitration. This is a very comprehensive resource covering e-books (such as monographs and practice manuals), journals, treaties, reports, awards and court decisions across over 200 jurisdictions.
British publishing group Informa offers a Dispute Resolution module within their i-law platform.Footnote 3 This module contains around 17 publications (e-books, journals, a loose-leaf and others published by Informa), forms and documents, legislation and relevant events.
There is also an OUP module on international commercial arbitration as part of the Oxford Legal Research Library.Footnote 4 It provides access to over 40 e-books published by the OUP. Additionally, official texts providing coverage of the rules of particular arbitral bodies and several key treatises looking at specific areas of international arbitration practice are included.
International commercial arbitration is also covered by Thomson Reuters on Westlaw International. This platform provides access to around 170 databases of commercial arbitration cases, statutes, rules, awards, model laws and clauses, treaties and news. It also includes some e-books on this topic.Footnote 5
KLUWER COMPETITION LAWFootnote 6
Kluwer Competition Law is a specialised platform offering access to various competition law sources, including over 130 e-books, loose-leafs, journals, Commission decisions, the ECJ judgments and a full collection of the EC Annual Reports from 1958. Additionally, various forms of current awareness are part of the platform – a blog, news, competition law news alerts or special focus articles.
Kluwercompetitionlaw.com.
As is the case with the Arbitration platform, the most valuable part for us is the collection of e-journals and e-books, most of which are focused on competition law in the European Union and Europe. Some of the leading titles on EU competition law are included, such as Bellamy and Child on European Law of Competition. New editions and updates are added regularly in the same way as with the Arbitration platform.
We do not rely on the platform regarding ECJ cases or Commission decisions as the majority of these can be found freely online via the European Union's own platforms, such as EUR-Lex or Curia. However, searching for cases or legislation will give users an option to search across various commentary titles at the same time which is definitely a big advantage of the Kluwer platform.
The ease of the search
Even though the browsing options are limited for this platform in comparison with the Arbitration platform, the search function is similar. A user can select between a simple search and advanced search with a good range of filters, including content type, time period and jurisdiction. It is also possible to use Boolean operators.
Search options.
E-books can be browsed and sorted by titles, date or author. They are listed together with loose-leafs. The lists can be narrowed down by filters on the left side by publication type, content type, policy area, jurisdiction, time period, author or source. It is also possible to search within individual titles. Search tips are displayed as shown below which is helpful.
Menu of books content.
Results page.
The material can be printed, e-mailed or downloaded as a pdf document. However, as with the Arbitration platform, it is not a scanned version of the print material but an electronic one. If you want to e-mail the document, you could either send the material in the form of a link or as a pdf document. However, this is limited up to 18 documents at the time.
Book content.
Other players in the field
There are also other publishers offering e-books on competition law, for example LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, Edward Elgar Publishing or Bloomsbury, either individually or as part of their electronic platforms.
Thomson Reuters, moreover, offers a Global Competition and Antitrust module within the Westlaw International Materials platform. This module exceeds what Kluwer platform can offer as it brings together around ‘700 English-language databases of legislation, cases, news, analysis and commentary from the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific countries’.Footnote 7
In terms of comparable platforms, it is worth mentioning the OUP's Oxford Competition Law. It is ‘a suite of fully interlinked competition analysis, peer reviewed case reports and source materials’ and contains ‘enhanced online versions of OUP's key commentaries in EU competition law’. It combines digitised commentaries with selective national case reports, EU legislation and analysis from EU member states.Footnote 8 Therefore it goes beyond being just a mere e-book platform, similar to the Kluwer platform.
As we have a subscription to this OUP module, we can have a look at the similarities and differences more closely. With regard to e-books, the OUP module includes around 30 titles - significantly fewer than Kluwer - which are exclusively published by the OUP. Additionally, there is a slight overlap with the Kluwer Competition Law platform which contains three OUP titles. When compared, the two platforms are not that dissimilar. It may be worth noting that the OUP platform contains abstracts - which are lacking on the Kluwer platform – and also a DOI alongside an ISBN. The downloadable parts are not paginated on either of the platforms, but, page ranges are displayed in the content list on the Kluwer module. An unquestionable advantage of the OUP platform in comparison to the Kluwer platform is the accessibility of the previous editions of some titles.
SUMMARY
Both Kluwer products described are a valuable addition to the list of existing platforms covering these areas of law. As has been shown, they are not unique in terms of offering more than just e-books. That is very useful to practitioners looking for more up-to-date information and deeper analyses in their area of expertise than simply a few textbooks.
However, the aspect which we appreciate the most as a library is the vast amount of e-books available in one place. As Kluwer is one of the main publishers of textbook commentaries on arbitration and competition law, they make available a relatively high number of e-books. These would otherwise need to be purchased individually. Another positive aspect is the availability of the leading textbooks in these areas for another publisher.
As we are relatively new to the products, we will probably need more time to assess all aspects of using them ourselves as well as see how our members interact with those platforms. We were also informed that some new features will be added to the platforms this year. One of them is Merger Thresholds Monitor which is ‘a single source for the most up-to-date merger control thresholds, procedural information, exchange rates, interpretation and guidance’ covering over 130 countries.
