Frequently asked questions

General questions about Investment Claims

1) What is available online?

Investment Claims brings you materials and analysis in the field of investor-state arbitration. The collection includes:

• Awards and decisions - full texts of over 300 arbitration awards and decisions in the field of international investment law.
• Full case reports - 180 full case reports are available at launch, and more will follow. Case reports are commissioned, together with expert analysis if appropriate, for the following types of awards and decisions:
  • Awards on the merits (including interim awards addressing issues relating to the merits of a dispute)
  • Awards dealing with jurisdiction issues
  • Awards dealing with costs
  • Court decisions relating to international investment arbitrations.
• Bilateral Investment Treaty sets - for the following key jurisdictions: Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Pakistan, Russia, Switzerland, USA. Each collection comprises a set of all publicly available bilateral investment treaties signed by the relevant state, together with a detailed commentary/overview for that jurisdiction. In some instances the jurisdictional overview will be published shortly after the treaty set.
• Commentaries - searchable online versions of key OUP commentaries and journal articles on international investment disputes.
• Key arbitration instruments - a collection of key international conventions relevant to investment disputes, arbitration rules of the major arbitration institutes and domestic arbitration statutes from leading arbitration jurisdictions.

2) How often will Investment Claims be updated?

We aim to add the full text of new awards and decisions within 48 hours of receipt. We aim to publish full case reports, with accompanying analysis, within three months of initial publication of the award or decision.

Bilateral Investment Treaty sets and key arbitration instruments will be reviewed and updated every three months.

New commentary will be published as and when it becomes available.

3) Can I search the free awards and decisions?

Searching is a function available only to Investment Claims subscribers, so no, the free content is not searchable. You can find the awards and decisions you need by using the List by… links under Awards and Decisions in the menu bar.

4) Is it possible to have a free trial?

5) How can I subscribe to Investment Claims?

6) On which browsers will Investment Claims run?

Investment Claims is designed to display and function correctly on the following browsers:

Internet Explorer 5.0 and higher for Windows
Internet Explorer 5.0 and higher for Macintosh
Mozilla 1.0 and higher for Windows
Mozilla 1.0 and higher for Macintosh
Firefox 1.0 and higher for Windows
Firefox 1.0 and higher for Macintosh
Safari 1.0 and higher for Macintosh

Pages will also display reliably on the following browsers:

Opera 7.0 for windows
Internet Explorer 4.0 for Windows
Internet Explorer 4.5 for Macintosh

Investment Claims will display reliably at 800x600, though we recommend 1024x768 as the optimum screen resolution.

7) How do I subscribe to the Investment Claims alert email?

8) How do I unsubscribe from the Investment Claims alert email?

9) Are alerts available by RSS feed?

10) Is Investment Claims accessible to disabled users?

11) What if I only want to print out parts of a report and not the whole thing?

From within any report, simply go to 'Print Options' at the top of each report and select the section you would like to print from the dropdown list.

12) In which order are search results displayed?

Search results are displayed in order of relevance, the most relevant results being those where search terms are found the most times. A weighting is also be given to results where search terms occur in the headnote as opposed to the judgment text.

Results may be sorted so that the most recent documents appear first or so that the most relevant documents appear first.

13) Can I bookmark a report in Investment Claims?

There is no specific bookmarking functionality built into the service but you can use the bookmarking options in your browser to bookmark or add to your favourites any document in Investment Claims, so that you may return to it at any time.

14) What is OUP's editorial policy for this service?

1) Why can't I access the free content on Investment Claims?

2) I have a subscription but can't access Investment Claims

3) After entering my username/password, I'm being bounced back to the log-in screen

It is possible that you need to alter your cache settings:

• In IE5: Select Tools: Internet Options on the menu bar, on the General tab select the Settings button and select 'every visit to the page';
• In IE6 +: Select View from the menu bar in Internet Explorer, and then choose Internet Options, General and then Settings, and under 'check for newer versions of stored pages' just select 'every visit to the page'.
• In Mozilla Firefox: Go to Tools / Options / Privacy and ensure that the 'Always clear my private data when I close Firefox' box is checked, and then click Settings and check the 'Cache' box.

4) I have forgotten my user name and password

Only account administrators can reset passwords. Please see your librarian or administrator for help.

Indidvidual subscribers: Forgot your password? Have a new one sent to you:

5) Can I access Investment Claims when I am away from my library/institution?

It is possible to have remote access to an institution's subscription, through either a referrer page on the institution's site, or username/password access. Please contact your librarian or account administrator for more details.

6) Do you offer library card access?

7) Is Investment Claims accessible through Athens?

Yes, Investment Claims is accessible through Athens. Pease ask your librarian or administrator for details.

8) What is your policy on cookies?

1) How long does it take for an award to appear in Investment Claims?

We aim to add the full text of new awards and decisions within 48 hours of receipt. We aim to publish full case reports, with accompanying analysis, within three months of initial publication of the award or decision.

2) What are Subjects and Keywords?

Subjects are high-level categories which indicate the subject matter of the document. They are similar to the main chapter headings in a practitioner text.

The Subjects used in case reports on the Investment Claims service represent the broadest concepts addressed in these decisions and awards, and are as follows:

• Admissibility
• Applicable law
• Arbitral rules & institutions
• Arbitrators
• Attribution
• Claims
• Conduct of proceedings
• Confidentiality and privilege
• Enforcement
• Evidence
• Expropriation
• Investment
• Investor
• Jurisdiction of arbitral tribunals
• Measure
• Parallel proceedings
• Place of arbitration
• Political violence
• Preliminary proceedings
• Remedies and costs
• Review of arbitral awards
• Specialized treaty frameworks
• Standards of treatment
• Treaties, interpretation

Each subject has a number of keywords assigned to it, which are more detailed terms which we have used to label each decision so that users can see at a glance what a decision is about and can search for similar decisions.

3) How do you choose the keywords that are assigned to case reports?

Keywords applied to case reports in Investment Claims come from a controlled list.

The keywords were chosen in consultation with the editorial board for Investment Claims and have been revised and added to during the process of reviewing the awards and decisions available at launch.

The keywords on the wider list reflect the main legal concepts at issue in investment arbitration awards and the terminology employed by practitioners in this specialized field of international law.

4) I am having problems with searching.

5) How do I cite an award or decision from Investment Claims?

Awards and decisions in Investment Claims are given static reference numbers, which follow the format: IIC 68 (2000), where 'IIC 68' is the report series award number and '2000' is the year of the award.

6) How are reports of awards and decisions structured in Investment Claims?

Basic information is contained in the Headnote, together with a summary of the Facts, Held, Analysis, and the full text of decision, award or judgment. Decisions are given in their original language, alongside an English translation of key sections. Paragraph numbering has been retained, where it appeared in the original, or has otherwise been added by OUP for ease of reference.

7) How do I suggest a decision or award that isn't included in Investment Claims?

8) I see a non-English judgment with no translation. Will there be one?

For decisions given in languages other than English, OUP will publish any available official English language translation at the same time as the full case report.

For non-English awards, decisions or judgments where an official translation is not available, OUP will commission a translation of key paragraphs. The translations process can take some time as translations need to be checked carefully. The case report will therefore be published in advance of the translation being available.

9) What material is original/official and what has been added by OUP?

The full text of the decision/award/judgment is official, whereas the report that precedes it is created by OUP. Some translations are also original/official. With some decisions OUP has added paragraph numbers and where this has occurred there is a note to that effect at the beginning of the judgment.

For BITS, the text of the treaties is original. It is preceded by a short headnote, added by OUP, which details the date that the treaty entered into force, the parties and other supplementary information.

10) Why do some accented characters display as boxes.

We recommend installing the Arial Unicode font to ensure that all characters display properly.

11) I've spotted an error in Investment Claims.

12) One of the links in Investment Claims doesn't work.

1) Which methods of access to Investment Claims are available?

Librarians or account administrators have the option to allow their users to access Investment Claims by the following methods:

• library card
• IP address (logs users directly into the website from your network)
• User name and password (for a limited number of concurrent users)
• Referring URL (from a secure page on your organization's site)

2) Our institution connects to the Internet using NAT. Can we access Investment Claims?

3) Users with off-site access to Investment Claims.

4) Questions about proxy servers

a) Can we access Investment Claims via our proxy server?

Yes. However you will need to give us the IP address of the proxy server in order for us to set up access.

5) Questions relating to IP addresses

6) Questions about passwords

7) Does Investment Claims support federated searching and meta-search?

Investment Claims supports meta-search, accessible by meta-search software via HTTP request. Investment Claims supports the method="get" using a base url of: http://www.investmentclaims.com/search_results.html?.

After that it is a matter of using the correct combination of the following parameters:

"query=" for query
The default scope for this parameter is Quick search

8) Are MARC records available?

9) Does Investment Claims support Shibboleth?

1) How do I use Subscriber Services?

Subscriber Services are only available to subscribers of Investment Claims. Once you have logged in to the Investment Claims service, just click the Subscriber Services link from the menu at the top of the Home page. Once on the Subscriber Services page, you will be required to enter your administrator username and password in order to access the following services:

• View subscription information and IP addresses
• View or change your account preferences
• View your institutional usage reports

2) Can I see usage statistics for my library/institution?

3) How do I update the subscription record for my institution?

4) Can I add my library's logo to Investment Claims?

1) Is Investment Claims OpenURL compliant?

2) What is the service identifier (sid) for OpenURL from Investment Claims?

The service identifier (sid) is OUP:IC.

3) What information should I register for OpenURL?

You should register the following information for OpenURL in Subscriber Services:

1. the resolver address (e.g. http://resolver.library.edu);
2. the version of the OpenURL standard your resolver requests; this will be one of:
   • 0.1
   • 1.0
   Note that IC currently supports only version 0.1 of the standard; 1.0 should not be selected;
3. the format in which OpenURL query parameters should be sent to the resolver: this will be one of:
1. key-value pairs (KEV)
2. XML Note that Investment Claims will provide OpenURL query parameters in KEV format: XML should not be selected.

4) When will I be able to specify OpenURL query parameters in XML format?

Query parameters in XML format will be enabled when Investment Claims supports version 1.0 of the OpenURL standard.

5) How will accented characters be handled by Investment Claims?

Investment Claims uses accented forms of characters in its OpenURLs: these are the characters concerned plus their accents, so, for example, Investment Claims uses 'é' instead of 'e'. We do this to provide the simplest solution for resolvers interpreting these characters and interfacing with other systems (e.g. library catalogues).

6) Will Investment Claims handle any DOI (digital object identifier) information in its OpenURL links?

Investment Claims does not handle any DOIs in its OpenURL links. We may incorporate these into our OpenURLs at some stage in the future.

7) Are OUP's products OpenURL targets or referring sources?

OUP's online products are currently referring sources only.

8) Can I add my library's OpenURL resolver logo to Investment Claims?

1) What is the Oxford Law Citator?

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 Law Online service, is loaded to that service at the same time as its own unique Citator record. This record 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.

2) How do I get back to ORIL from the Oxford Law Citator?

There are a number of ways to return to the ORIL service from the Oxford Law Citator:

• Use your browser's Back button;
• Click on the link at top of the Citator page to the report on the OUP service;
• Enter the document online at the specific place in the report, commentary or full text at which a specific decision is mentioned or discussed, via the links which appear under the "Referenced at" heading in the links section.

3) Which links take me to the ORIL service, and which links take me further into the Citator?

The orange-coloured links take you to the ORIL service, and the dark blue-coloured links take you further into the Oxford Law Citator.

4) Why is there no link to a document in an OUP service from the Citator record I am looking at?

Each document published on OUP's services has its own Citator Page. However, the number of records in the Citator is many times the number of documents on OUP's services, as part of the process of marking up the links is to create a separate Citator record for each item mentioned or discussed within OUP's online content, whether or not that item, or any report on that item, is actually included within OUP's online collection. Therefore, some Citator records do not link to a document, as we may not have that document in an Oxford online service. Where possible we will link these records to the full text of the item on a reliable external web source, via a "See also" link at the top of the record.

The aim is to provide users with the information that they need to continue their research, and with the facility to move between published documents that mention the same decisions, instruments or commentary.

5) What kinds of references are added to the Citator?

The process of enhancement incorporates into the Oxford Law Citator references within OUP services to cases, instruments (legislation, treaties, institutional rules etc), commentary (journal articles, monographs etc) and other official documents.

6) I do not subscribe to all ORIL modules - will I only be able to see Citator records for the content to which I subscribe?

All subscribers to any one or more modules of ORIL, or any one or more OUP online legal service, will be given unlimited access to all records within the Citator, and will see the volume of records it contains grow as we add and enhance more content within exiting datasets, or add entirely new content sets. Access to the Citator is provided free-of-charge with any subscription.