Coherent Digital Announces Policy Commons to Launch in June 2020

"Toby Green, former Head of Publishing, OECD and now co-founder, Coherent Digital: “It took 60 years for scientific consensus on the dangers of asbestos to change public health policy. It’s been 120 years since researchers gave early warning about the climate, yet policy makers are only just beginning to take action. One of the reasons for the long delay between expert consensus and policy action is because most content from experts in IGOs, NGOs, think tanks and research centers is published informally. This makes discovery hard, cataloguing impossible and preservation a nightmare. Students struggle to learn, too. In reading lists and syllabi, we’ve found that 25% of links to documents are broken. We intend to fix these problems with Policy Commons.”

Policy Commons will be an open platform that makes it easy to find, catalog and preserve reports, working papers, policy briefs and data from a directory of over 5,000 IGOs, NGOs, think tanks and research centers. It will be a comprehensive service that covers born-digital and archival material from IGOs like the OECD, the UN, the World Bank, IMF, FAO and EU, as well as leading NGOs, such as Amnesty International, and smaller influential think tanks.

Anyone will be able to use Policy Commons to find the content they need - full text access will be offered via the original website, if still available. Subscribing institutions will be able to access preservation copies, exclusive content, and benefit from a full range of support services, including catalog data and usage tracking...."