Coherent Digital Launches Landmark Effort to Rescue, Preserve, and Open Access to Endangered Policy Content

Contact: Toby Green

Coherent Digital today announced the Policy Commons 2025 Open Collection, an initiative to identify, preserve, and make openly available government materials at risk of disappearing. It also announced a new funding model to make the program sustainable for the long term.

The Policy Commons 2025 Open Collection will rescue content from government organizations experiencing the removal of public information and data. Reports, blogposts, videos, and podcasts will be saved. Coherent will assign a permanent unique identifier to each rescued item, index it for discovery through Google Scholar and discovery services, and add rich metadata to support research, teaching, and public engagement.

“For every new customer dollar spent on current Policy Commons collections between now and December 31, 2025, we’ll rescue an endangered item, enrich it with metadata, and make it freely available to the world,” said Toby Green, Publisher. “This new Rescue-to-Open business model will enable us to fund the rescue of millions of items. We’re calling on librarians and researchers to help identify endangered materials from government agencies and suggest at-risk sites.”

The Policy Commons 2025 Open Collection and the Rescue-to-Open program will officially launch at the ER&L Conference later this month, with more than 100,000 items. The collection will be freely available to the public. For security reasons, a simple registration will be required.

Coherent Digital is actively inviting librarians, researchers, and the wider policy community to identify and contribute endangered reports, datasets, podcasts, and other content in urgent need of preservation. “We’ve already captured over 100,000 items, including 10,200 from USAID, and with community help, we can secure many more before they vanish,” added Green. “This program directly supports today’s researchers who need immediate access, and it preserves essential historical records for future scholars.”

Existing customers, in addition to having free access to the entire 2025 Open Collection, will see all the rescued items added to their appropriate Policy Commons collections. 

For details, to learn more, or to contribute suggestions or materials, please visit our web page at https://coherentdigital.net/open-2025 or contact Toby Green.

About Coherent Digital

We serve over 1,500 customers on six continents with collections and services for research and learning. We specialize in finding and preserving endangered materials—grey literature, primary sources, new media, voices from the Global South—and making them accessible. We cover all disciplines including the humanities, social sciences, and STEM.