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Developments in digital technology have the potential to transform academic journal publishing. Academic research can now be disseminated directly to academic networks and the wider public, in theory bypassing the need for traditional journal publishing structures, conventional journal publishers and their associated commercial practices and cost structures. Cost is a particularly pressing issue for Higher Education (HE) globally. In the last few decades the strategies adopted by journal publishers have led to increasingly steep and unsustainable costs for our academic libraries, the centralisation of publishing power in the hands of a few conglomerates, and the corporatisation of metricised data that overwhelmingly profits corporate capital and that has largely been developed through the donated labour of academics, librarians and academic institutions. In this article we explore briefly the history of scholarly communications shifts, and the implications of digital publication for law libraries and law journals. We argue for a change of ownership in the means of production and analyse some of the obstacles to achieving this. We show how radical Open Access (OA) alternatives can work, based upon a case study of two existing OA journals, and we conclude with measures by which radical OA journals can be increased within the cultures of legal research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a consultation on the European Union (EU) online gambling market and the major policy issues that the growth of the market generates. It discusses the importance of protecting minors and other vulnerable groups. It cites the insufficiency of measures to protect minors from online gambling in Great Britain. The article also tackles the conflict of interest issue.

Thanks are due to our book review editor Dr James Griffin for his help with this section as well as his valuable support with the general technical editing of this Issue. Returning to the theme of apps, Pauline McBride offers an insightful commentary based on her experience of building a legal expert app in "Building a Personal Data App". The author offers insights about the possible role that machine learning might play in the design of legal expertise automation apps. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses papers included in the current issue of the "European Journal of Law and Technology" including an analysis of the video games industry in the context of transmedia and the law, an analysis of the European Commission's Recommendation on a Code of Conduct for Responsible Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies Research and an examination of generic top-level domain (TLD) names.

An introduction to the journal is presented which discusses articles on topics including the protection of children's privacy online, the complexities of Internet of Things, and criminal copyright proposals in Great Britain.

The article focuses on the creation of the Finnish Internet Police or Nettipoliisi to intervene into the activities of social media and shifting a part of community policing into the virtual world including relation between social media and police, and crime prevention through internet policing.

An introduction to this issue of the "European Journal of Law and Technology" is presented.