Project financed from the state budget as part of the Polish Minister of Science's programme entitled Science for Society, project No. NdS/529885/2021//2021, grant amount PLN 1,654,147.05, total project value PLN 1,654,147.05.

The aim of the project is to create a Global Legal Information web platform, providing a reliable and up-to-date access point to information on the legal systems of states and international organisations, i.e. normative acts and their available language versions, electronic resources made available online (resources of open repositories, publishing platforms/scientific journals).

The web portal will realistically increase the accessibility of scientific legal information (ease of accessing/searching). It will serve to provide structured information on the legal framework governing the implementation of innovative projects in all fields of science and branches of the economy in the national legal system, as well as in European Union law, international law or the national legal systems of third party countries. In this context, the project aims to stimulate socio-economic innovation by increasing the availability (making it easier to access) of expert legal information: both in the form of legal acts and case law, as well as scientific publications available in the OA model, by making it available in a structured form. The Global Legal Information platform will offer users legal knowledge that is up-to-date, accessible anywhere, anytime and delivered in an attractive way.

The platform will facilitate research in the field of comparative law, which allows for the understanding of analogies and differences among alternative legal models. According to B. Liberska, the deepening interdependence between countries and regions as a result of globalisation and increasing international flows and the activities of transnational corporations leads to qualitatively new connections between companies, markets and economies. Unprecedented opportunities for economic development are becoming a challenge to find new solutions in the legal field. In this context, the essential function of comparative law becomes to develop and make available to national law-makers and practitioners the tools for a proper evaluation process and for adequate transplants of foreign legal standards or innovations supported by borrowed ideas. Only then can comparative law have the capacity to subvert and bring about groundbreaking change – including in the field of jurisprudence.

The project is an extension of the Global Legal Information Network Foundation's efforts (GLIN, GLIN2) to make legal information more accessible. In this context, the platform, as a product of the implementation of a project funded by the Ministry of Education and Science, would undoubtedly contribute to shaping the public perception of Polish science internationally. A marketing campaign is planned in the four main conference languages (English, French, German and Spanish) to effectively reach out to foreign users. By providing links to Polish legal publications issued under CC-BY licences together with metadata descriptions in the four languages of the user interface, the platform contributes to the internationalisation of Polish science and the increased recognition of its achievements.

The project aims to raise awareness of the OA movement among Internet users, popularise its principles and the benefits of publishing in the so-called open access for publishers and authors.

Making legal publications (scientific legal information) available will improve the effectiveness of cooperation between science and the economic environment and disseminate knowledge about the links between science, innovation and the economy. The research clearly indicates that law information (from legal sources) and legal information (from case law texts and doctrine) – properly structured into knowledge structures and practical skills – are crucial for decision-making processes that translate into the functioning of enterprises, state institutions, as well as individuals (ordinary users).

The Global Legal Information platform will support innovation processes and the commercialisation of research and development results and know-how related to these results, including the promotion of good innovation practices. By realistically increasing the availability of educational material in the discipline of law (including public sector information resources from academic sources), the commercialisation potential of research results in the discipline of legal sciences can increase. The results of research/expertise work are used de facto in all areas of socio-economic life, especially in the area of so-called new technologies, knowledge transfer and innovation for the economy, stimulating development (which is always preceded by an analysis of the legal environment, facilitated by the availability of scientific legal publications). The implementation of the project will contribute to the transposition of the results of the research work into the practice of law application, supporting the innovation of the economy.

In establishing the grant programme, Minister pointed out that its scope was chosen to emphasise the interdependencies and benefits in the areas of science – innovation – economy, while the aim is to improve the effectiveness of cooperation between science and the economic and social environment and to promote innovation in scientific research. The project contributes to the above objectives by using IT tools not only to develop social capital (including the private sector) by enabling the enhancement of competences, personal and professional development (acquiring knowledge through self-education using publications available in repositories, digital libraries, knowledge bases and other external, open sources of information to which the Global Legal Information platform will refer). The implementation of the project has the potential to contribute to a change in the perception of the science of law as essential to maintaining an innovative economy and ensuring social development.

By increasing the availability of legal information in the broadest sense as one of the tools of legal education and the realisation of the right to a court, the project is in line with the principles of the responsibility of science (arousing cognitive curiosity – including of people at risk of social exclusion and criminalisation, integration of the local community with academic centres). It can become a tool to enable the realisation of one of the fundamental rights – the right to a court. The Guidelines on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, submitted to the UN General Assembly Human Rights Council on 18 July 2012 by the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona. The Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, in relation to the realisation of the right to equal protection of the law, access to the courts, the right to effective remedy, point out the obligations of States to ensure that people living in poverty can exercise their right to seek, receive and disseminate information on all decisions affecting their lives, especially information on how rights and freedoms can be strengthened and redress for violations can be regulated, by increasing the accessibility of legal information to people living in poverty, inter alia through its dissemination in a varied and suitably adapted manner that takes into account the cultural specificities of the addressees, while at the same time taking positive action to ensure that people living in poverty can benefit from the facilities provided by advances in science, and to ensure that these people have access to scientific information and programmes and the results of scientific research. The platform could become an important element of the free legal aid system, implementing the recommendations indicated above on a global scale.

In the first months of the project, Task 1: Creation of the Global Legal Information portal Pre-implementation work necessary to define the detailed guidelines for the projected GLI system was carried out. The focus was on discussing the possibility of using a standard open-source system as an interface for the portal editors, pointing out that such a solution would facilitate tasks 2-4 (persons running queries and preparing metadata descriptions did not need to be familiar with XML or another database language, and there would be a reduction in update time by omitting the import/migration of data from the database to the GLI user interface system). KOHA was finally selected as the system for further analysis because of its ability to make massive corrections and additions to metadata descriptions and its “friendly” programming API. The possibility of integrating the system with multi-search engines (VuFind) was pointed out as an alternative to writing the user interface from scratch if one of the open-source systems is chosen. In mid-2022, Ryszard Dróżdż, Eng, completed the architecture of the GLI system, based on implementations of two open-source systems: KOHA and VuFind, activities were carried out to adapt the application's web interface to the needs of users (in line with UX/UI studies covering two modules: the legal acts database and the case law database). As the feeding of the database system with metadata descriptions (records) of various types of materials (legal acts, case law, 2024 – repositories, digital libraries and other databases, as well as journals published in OA) went on, the system was modified so that the presentation of the catalogued resources was as optimal as possible and subsidised to the needs/preferences of various user groups also outside the academic sector. Modifications to the system's web interface were carried out by the project team together with the Head of the Design Division of INP PAN and a programmer employed by the Institute as part of cyclical reviews. Immediately prior to making the GLI system more widely available to users, a UX/UI audit was commissioned. Recommendations were taken into account to optimise search functionality.

In order to standardize metadata and enable metadata exchange with other systems at the formal level during the preparatory stage, in the first months of 2022, the information and search language (JIW) was adapted in the formal layer based on the Marc21 library description format for silva rerum documents – in the absence of applications for multimedia databases/interfaces, it was based on the Marc21 library description format for silva rerum documents – in the absence of applications for multimedia databases/interfaces. In the descriptive layer, the JIW was developed on the basis of the indications and recommendations of the project manager Prof. Anna Młynarska-Sobaczewska and Piotr Polak. The possibility of adapting the information and search language of ePBP (Polish Legal Bibliography, i.e. the bibliographic-abstract database created by the INP PAN) was then negatively verified. The solutions implemented in the first months were reviewed periodically. In response to the identification of the need to increase the scope of metadata collected and processed for scientific and specialised collections (doctrine), in Q4 of 2023, a metadata description scheme for journals (a resource that is often made available through several access points, i.e. sites, databases) was developed, tested and implemented. Successively, along with the supplementation of the GLI database with records containing/presenting information on web portals containing legal acts and jurisprudence of foreign countries, activities related to the adaptation of the GLI search engine interface to the needs of users and the specifics of the data collected in the system were also carried out. As there are no universal standards for the design of pages publishing/accessing legal acts and case law, the need for interface modifications was often raised by the portal editors (information scientists) who developed the information on the aforementioned databases in the GLI system. Modifications to the system's web interface were carried out by the project team together with the Head of the Design Division of INP PAN and a programmer employed by the Institute as part of cyclical reviews, and their time-consuming nature did not necessitate the involvement of additional contractors.

From June 2022 onwards, Tasks 2, 3 and 4 were carried out sequentially to provide content for the database. The database editors/scientific information specialists compiled records presenting the following resources:

As part of Tasks 2 and 3, the editors also produced informative texts on the legal system, the sources of law and the judicial system of each country, its hierarchy, jurisdiction and the binding of other national courts by case law.

In addition to the content metadata, the description of the aforementioned resources always includes “technical” data that can be used for further integration of the resources into a single search engine, i.e. API and OAI-PMH accessibility, WCAG 2.1 compliance.

The aim of Tasks 2 and 3 is to make available on the platform structured, reliable information on sources of law: legal acts and jurisprudence. On the other hand, the provision of structured, data-linked references to the many dispersed repositories of journals/publishers/academic units, subject databases, digital libraries on a single platform (access point) within the framework of Task 4 will contribute to increasing the availability of legal information and, at the same time, the legal awareness of the public, which will have a direct impact on increasing innovation in socio-economic life and the digital advancement of society. Increasing the accessibility and internationalisation of Polish scientific legal journals by placing links to their resources on a single platform with links to the resources of foreign journals published in the OA model.

The subject-matter tasks in the project were carried out by a team of information scientists under the direction of Ryszard Dróżdż. The team consisted of: Diana Gałązka, Marta Mądziel, Marlena Zgódka and Milena Rokicka, plus Joanna Kurczab.

Activities to disseminate the results of the project were carried out under Task 5: Promotional activities The main information channels were the mailing to academic institutions and the distribution of an information film (advertisement) made in 5 language variants. The campaign was carried out by ScienceMedia. The SEO of the website is carried out continuously by the IT service of ILS PAS.

A word and graphic trade mark has also been registered for the Global Legal Information system: GLI – Global Legal Information (application No.: Z.578978 of 7/01/2025) in the following classes of the Vienna classification: 26.04.02, 26.04.09, 26.04.18, 27.05.01, 27.05.24, 26.11.02, 29.01.03 and in accordance with the Nice classification: