Advantages

The Online Commentary fulfills everything that an ordinary legal commentary published in book form offers. This means, among other things, that there is quality assurance: the commentators are carefully selected by the respective publishers and the commentaries are subject to a rigorous content review ("peer review") before publication. The peer review is carried out at least by the editor of the relevant piece of legislation. Some commentaries go even further and subject commentaries to a double-blind peer review.

Additional benefits of the Online Commentary

Compared to an ordinary "paper commentary", the Online Commentary has the following additional advantages:

Benefits to readers

  • Free and freely accessible: comments are freely accessible on the Internet. 

  • Accessible at any time: the Online Commentary is available anytime and anywhere via the Internet - including on a tablet or cell phone through a special website adapted for mobile use.

  • Versioning: legal developments can be quickly integrated into the individual commentaries thanks to the online format. Due to an innovative versioning system on the website, new developments can be viewed seamlessly. Moreover, the different versions can even be compared with each other. 

  • Links: the Online Commentary contains links to external sources, provided they are electronically accessible. Federal Supreme Court rulings, articles, books, documents, etc. can be consulted with a click.

  • Cross-references: the Online Commentary provides links between the various commentaries. This eliminates the need to search painstakingly for the passage to which you are referring.

  • Search: the Online Commentary offers a full text search for each commentary as well as for the entire Online Commentary database.

  • Commentaries in your language: the commentaries are automatically translated into the Swiss official languages (German, French and Italian) as well as into English. This allows you to quickly get an idea of the commentary, even if you are not (as) fluent in the original language of the commentary. 

  • Suggested quotes: each commentary contains a suggested quote for an easy citation.

  • Permalink: commentaries can be viewed at any time through citation links (called permalinks).

  • Long-term storage: all texts of the online commentary are also stored in the repository for international and interdisciplinary legal research of the Berlin State Library.

  • PDF file: the commentaries can be downloaded as an easy-to-read PDF document.

  • Clear terms of use: the contributions are all licensed under the standardized Creative Commons CC-BY license. The comments can therefore be used freely with credit to the author. 

Advantages for authors

  • High visibility: the Online Commentary is freely available and can be found on search engines. This offers great visibility. 

  • Continuous publication: contributions can be published online independently of other commentaries of the same act. A blocking of the commentary by persons who do not respect the deadlines is thus excluded on the Online Commentary.

  • Unlimited commenting possibilities: all Swiss legislative acts can be commented on the Online Commentary, i.e. not only the classic areas, but also more exotic legal areas for which no commentary exists yet.

  • Commenting on individual articles: the Online Commentary allows you to comment on certain particularly relevant articles of a law. It is therefore not necessary to comment all the provisions of a law.

  • Copyright remains with the author: the author does not have to assign the copyright of his contribution to the Online Commentary. Instead, the commentary is made available under a Creative Commons license. 

  • No competition clause: unlike other commentaries, the Online Commentary does not have a competition clause.

  • Comments in your language: comments can be written in a swiss official language (German, French and Italian) or in English.

  • Machine translation: your contribution will be translated by a machine. This allows you to reach a wider audience.