JLMI Call for papers - Issue no. 2/2026

This Call for Papers of the Journal of Law, Market & Innovation (JLMI) concerns the second issue to be published at the end of July 2025. and is devoted to Governing AI and Digital General-Purpose Technologies: Balancing Innovation, Competition, and Rights in the Digital Economy. You can find the call with all the details at the following link:

Governing AI and Digital General-Purpose Technologies: Balancing Innovation, Competition, and Rights in the Digital Economy

The Call invites contributions on the subject of Governing AI and Digital General-Purpose Technologies: Balancing Innovation, Competition, and Rights in the Digital Economy.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a digital general-purpose technology (GPT), comparable in systemic importance to electricity or information and communication technologies. Its widespread adoption, capacity for ongoing enhancement, and role in fostering complementary innovations are already transforming economies, governance, and social structures. These changes raise significant legal and regulatory questions. This special issue aims to bring together scholars from law, economics, and related fields to explore how to govern AI as a GPT. Contributions may take doctrinal, normative, or interdisciplinary approaches.

We invite submissions that analyse which remedies, contractual controls, or institutional reforms most effectively balance innovation, competition, and human rights protection.

The authors may also explore the challenges of enforcing existing rules, such as the challenges in private enforcement of the provisions of the Digital Markets Act (DMA). As observed by the German Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht Köln, 15 UKI 2/25 at paras 30-31), the DMA is open to private enforcement. This in turn offers a promising avenue to facilitate gatekeepers’ effective compliance, most notably, with the obligations under Articles 5, 6 and 7 of the DMA. This calls for discussion as the Commission is currently considering the effectiveness of the DMA, and the review of the Act is underway.   

The issue will also address the role of normative principles such as fairness and transparency in regulating AI and digital markets. Information asymmetries in the digital markets leave users in a vulnerable position, a phenomenon referred to as ‘digital vulnerability’, which then also becomes a key concern under the AI Act, and finds a mention therein over twenty-five times.  How does digital vulnerability influence user behaviour, and what is the bridge between consumer protection law and digital markets?   

The EU’s AI Act, essentially a product safety regulation, has notable implications for facilitating transparency in the use of training data used by the General Purpose AI Models (GPAIs). By offering transparency as regards training data, the EU’s AI Act offers a fundamental rights-compliant framework, when original as well as synthetic data is used in the training of these models. The EU AI Act thus covers a range of fundamental underlying concerns, above and beyond its fundamental offering of being a product safety regulation. These range from the transparency requirements to addressing consumer vulnerability in the digital markets. From the lens of intellectual property rights, and most notably, copyright and related rights, transparency as regards the training data is vital to understand whether human-generated works have been used in the training of GPAI. The EU’s extensive requirements under the AI Act may also be seen as extraterritorial overreach, as the AI Act applies to the GPAI providers, even when they are based outside the EU.   

Moreover, the authors also encouraged looking at the issue from a comparative lens. Digital markets are essentially borderless. The global nature of the platforms means that the concerns of contestability and fairness in digital markets are a common concern for regulators worldwide.  

The Editorial Board will select articles based on the quality of research and writing, diversity, and relevance of the topic. The novelty of the academic contribution is also an essential requirement.

Prospective articles should be submitted in the form of abstracts (around 800 words) or draft articles (see below) to submissions.jlmi@iuse.it by 25 November 2025. Authors will be notified of the outcome of their submission by 10 December 2025.

Final articles shall be delivered by 10 March 2026 and should conform to the journal style guide that is based on OSCOLA.

Typically, the JLMI accepts contributions within the range of 10.000-15.000 words, including footnotes, but both shorter and longer articles will be considered. Submitted articles will undergo a rigorous double-blind peer-review process. Prior to submission, prospective authors are invited to check the JLMI Authors’ guidelines (also with regard to simultaneous submission to other journals) and Code of Ethics. For further information, or for consultation on a potential submission, please email us at editors.jlmi@iuse.it.

Authors are required to disclose if they have submitted their article elsewhere, both in case of negative and pending reviews, and promptly update the editorial board of any changes in this regard, throughout the whole editorial process with the JLMI.