Blog > A new year, a new look: Welcome to SCRIPTed 3.0!

Some of our readers might recall our editors’ note in the most recent issue of SCRIPTed, published in December of last year, where we mentioned that there are many exciting things in store for our journal. With the passing of our ten-year anniversary, the SCRIPTed team felt that this was the perfect opportunity to rejuvenate certain aspects of the journal, namely the one and only portal for all things SCRIPTed-related: our website.

The vision of Laurence (our technical editor), Edward (managing editor) and myself was that the website have a clean, accessible interface with clear display of all the necessary information one might need concerning SCRIPTed and, of course, an easy-to-access archive of our previous issues. The SCRIPTed Blog is a fresh addition to our website. We envision that this section may be used as a platform for legal researchers in any stage of their career, but particularly those who are starting out, to explore ideas through a short piece that we will publish here in the blog section.

Despite the present changes and additions to our website, SCRIPTed shall remain, as ever, a high-quality, peer-reviewed online journal. We are committed to supporting early career researchers working in the legal field, from those who wish to publish with us, to those who work with us. A special and somewhat unique feature of SCRIPTed, which we are very proud of, is its dual quality of being entirely open access and completely free from article processing charges. This has always been the case, and shall remain as such.

By virtue of the very ambit of our journal, the content of SCRIPTed’s publications always remains topical. Recently, there has been a flurry of developments in IT, IP, and medical science and technologies that are of great interest to us. To name a few: the recent draft regulations on mitochondrial replacement therapy; gene patents and the ongoing battle over CRISPR-9 patents; the recent fracas between Apple and the FBI; the UK’s draft investigatory powers bill; YouTube copyright battles; cyber-hacking; and the forthcoming General Data Protection Regulation. The rapid advance of technologies in recent years means that this cornucopia of legal issues is always morphing, and of course continues to require rapid and astute legal analysis. The constant game of catch-up between law and science is a common theme amongst our submissions; in doing so, SCRIPTed’s authors are continuing to make a valuable contribution to the ongoing issues concerning law, technology and society.

This year we are happy to say that we have many new additions to our team, and they are joining those who have been with us for many years. To view the 2016 SCRIPTed editorial team, please see our Editorial Board page. There are more exciting things in store for this year, with our photo competition, and three planned issues packed with articles, case comments, conference reports, and analysis pieces due to be released this Spring, Summer and Winter.

As ever, I would like to thank everyone who contributes to SCRIPTed, from our authors, to our editorial team, to those who have advised and supported us over the past 11 years. Over this time SCRIPTed has published numerous articles concerning issues in law and society as they pertain to new technologies. Over the past 11 years SCRIPTed has come on in leaps and bounds with the aid of a multitude of contributions from the legal academic community, and we hope that with this new website and blog, SCRIPTed shall continue to shoot Onwards and Upwards.

As technology moves forward, so must SCRIPTed, and thus, with this in mind, I wish you all a very warm welcome to SCRIPTed 3.0!

Catriona McMillan, SCRIPTed Editor-in-Chief