About the Oxford Law Citator

What is the Oxford Law Citator?

The Oxford Law Citator is powerful research tool provided free of charge with all online legal services from Oxford. It is a major project which will develop alongside Oxford's exciting online legal programme, to continually improve and enhance linking and referencing throughout the future suite of services.

The Oxford Law Citator links together OUP materials that mention or discuss each other, and provides further information on all references within OUP materials to:

• Judicial and arbitral decisions
• Treaties and conventions
• Domestic legislation
• Institutional rules and other legal instruments
• Provisions within all types of instrument
• Books
• Journal articles

Creation of Oxford Law Citator records

Each decision, instrument (treaty, piece of legislation, set of rules), or commentary (whether a journal article, chapter of a book or other commentary) published on an OUP online legal service, is loaded to that service at the same time as its own unique Citator record. This page is where users can find citation details and other useful information about the published document.

From this page, users can:

• access the report of the decision if it is available in an OUP online service to which they subscribe
or
• continue their research by following links to other records in the Citator which map relationships between decisions, instruments and commentary.

Enhancement of documents post-publication

Following publication, OUP online content undergoes a process of enhancement, during which the references in the published document are researched and linked by OUP's legal research specialists. A hypertext link is created from each item referenced within the document, to the unique Citator record for that item.

Once this process is complete, a user looking at the Citator record for a case, instrument, or even a provision within an instrument, will see:

• a list of all of the documents within OUP's collection that reference the same item, and
• links from the Citator record directly back to the location of that reference in the published document.

Important point to note

Full linking of references via the Oxford Law Citator will not be complete for the cases available at ORIL launch until late September. The second stage of mark-up of cases, covered above under 'Enhancement of documents post-publication', will be completed over the 7 weeks post-launch on 4 August. Links will be turned on in each document as enhancement is completed.

Citator records for documents not included in an OUP service

The Oxford Law Citator contains records for many more documents than are published on OUP's services, as all references contained within each published document are also linked to their own Citator records.

Subscription to any one or more of OUP's services includes unlimited access to all records in the Oxford Law Citator.

The Oxford Law Citator Record

Each Citator record, when complete, contains two distinct parts:

1. Citation and other information about this case, including links back to documents in OUP's online collection
2. Links section providing access to other Citator records

1. Citation and other information about this case, including links back to documents in OUP's online collection
• A link to the published document if it is available in an OUP service.
• Basic information about the published document (e.g., for decisions, this info would include details of the parties, key dates and judges or tribunal)
• Official, OUP and parallel citation information for the published item
• Links to documents in selected trusted external web sources.
2. Links section providing access to other Citator records
• Related proceedings links - i.e. links to Citator records for previous or subsequent stages in the same proceedings, or developments in other proceedings which are closely related to these proceedings.
• Cross referencing links - i.e. links to Citator records for decisions, instruments or commentary mentioned or discussed in the published document
and
• Links to Citator records for decisions and commentary which mention or discuss the published document
• Jurisdiction links - ie links to Citator records for all relevant jurisdictions, providing access to other items originating from/involving the same jurisdiction

More about jurisdiction linking

Links are provided from each Citator record for a piece of published or referenced content, to Citator records for the jurisdiction(s) to which that item relates (whether states, courts, arbitral bodies or other institutions).

Users can follow these links to:

• find other decisions or instruments relating to the relevant jurisdiction(s), which are included, mentioned or discussed in OUP's collection
• find other decisions to which a particular state, or one of its nationals, was a party and which are included, mentioned or discussed in OUP's collection
• find treaties to which a particular state is or was a signatory which are included, mentioned or discussed in OUP's online collection.