On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Hellenic OCR Team and the School of Politics, Government and International Relations of the Faculty of Law at Universidad Austral, we invite the national and international academic community to submit papers for publication in the inaugural issue of the new Austral Journal of Parliamentary Studies (REPA). The issue, titled “A decade of excellence in parliamentary studies”, marks a decade of innovation, collaboration, and research in the field of parliamentary studies.
Actors and Occasion
The Hellenic OCR Team is a scientific crowdsourcing initiative that brings together researchers, professionals, and enthusiasts with a shared interest in parliamentary data and digital innovation. Founded in Greece, the team focuses on the digitisation, processing, and computational analysis of parliamentary documents to open new possibilities for open data, transparency, and evidence-based research. As a multidisciplinary network, it combines expertise from political science, computer science, law, and information science, developing methodologies, tools, and good practices for the digital transformation of parliamentary work. Beyond its technical contributions, the Hellenic OCR Team also operates as an active knowledge-sharing community, promoting collaboration among academia, civil society and international institutions, and establishing itself as a pioneer in the application of emerging technologies to parliamentary studies.
The School of Politics, Government and International Relations of the Faculty of Law at Universidad Austral has, since its creation, become a regional academic reference in Latin America for training, research, and practical engagement in public affairs. Its mission focuses on strengthening the institutional capacities of the State and its organisations, promoting professional, transparent, and evidence-informed public management. Over the past decade, the School has consolidated a comprehensive academic offering—including undergraduate, graduate, executive and doctoral programmes—characterised by an interdisciplinary approach, a comparative perspective and strong articulation with national and international institutions.
Its main areas of work include democratic governance, public innovation, parliamentary diplomacy, integrity and transparency, legislative studies, and decision-making in complex environments. In the field of parliamentary studies, the School has led pioneering initiatives in the region, promoting specialised training programmes, cooperation networks with national parliaments and multilateral organisations, and applied research projects on legislative modernisation, citizen participation, digitalisation, artificial intelligence, and institutional quality.
Thanks to its growing academic community—comprising scholars, researchers, public-sector professionals and international experts—the School has become a regional hub for rigorous analysis, regulatory innovation and capacity-building in parliamentary affairs. Its collaboration with global networks, scientific associations and comparative research centres has strengthened the production of knowledge and the exchange of good practices across diverse political-institutional contexts.
Within this framework, the creation of the new Austral Journal of Parliamentary Studies (REPA) emerges as a natural and strategic milestone: a robust, open and scientifically rigorous editorial platform aimed at fostering original research, promoting interdisciplinary dialogue and projecting the advances of the community dedicated to the study of parliaments and democratic governance.
The initiative has the support of the Hanns Seidel Foundation of Argentina.
Themes and Scope
Submissions are invited that reflect the intersection of parliamentary studies, digital transformation, open data and institutional reform, in line with the documented work of the Hellenic OCR Team and the editorial group.
Suggested thematic areas:
- Advanced document processing and computational analysis of parliamentary records
- Digitisation, open data and corpus development
- Legal informatics and evidence-based policymaking
- Artificial intelligence, big data and emerging technologies in parliamentary contexts
- Crowdsourcing, digital participation and citizen engagement in governance
- Parliamentary diplomacy, inter-parliamentary systems and governance
- Digital transformation of parliaments and legislative bodies
- Norm-making and legislative drafting in digital environments
- Comparative parliamentary research and innovative methodologies
- Networks, collaborations and knowledge-exchange ecosystems in parliamentary studies
- Case studies presenting good practices, lessons learned and impact stories from the past decade
Other relevant topics include multilingual corpora and interoperability, open parliamentary data ecosystems, institutional transparency and technology-enabled legislative innovation.
Timeline
- Call for papers launched: November 2025
- Expression of interest deadline: 30 December 2025
- Full paper submission deadline: 31 May 2026
- Peer-review process: 30 September 2026
- Digital publication: Late 2026
- Limited print edition: Early 2027
Editorial Team
This special issue will be co-edited by:
- Fotis Fitsilis, Universidad Austral & Hellenic Parliament
- George Mikros, Hamad Bin Khalifa University
- Juan de Dios Cincunegui, Universidad Austral & National Congress of Argentina
Submission Guidelines
Authors are invited to submit original research articles, case studies or reflective essays of approximately 5,000–6,000 words (including references, APA 7th edition). The journal will accept submissions in English and Spanish, ensuring broad participation from researchers in diverse linguistic contexts. Submissions should be formatted according to these guidelines.
Expression of Interest
Expressions of interest and related queries for this special issue may be submitted to the editorial team at info@hellenicOCRteam.gr by 30 December 2025. Interested contributors are kindly invited to send the title of their proposal along with a 150-word abstract.