Policy Commons Open Collection

Rescuing the public record

When governments remove public information for political reasons, the loss can be permanent — and the consequences for research, accountability, and informed debate far-reaching. The Policy Commons Open Collection was created in response: a growing archive of at-risk content rescued from government agencies and government-funded organisations, and made freely available to all.

The collection began in 2025, prompted by the systematic removal of public documents by the incoming US administration — including environmental and climate assessments, DEI program materials, and the extensive corpus of USAID publications. Working hand-in-hand with the library community and the USAID alumni network, we’ve used our preservation tools and platform to rescue and re-mount much of this material into a single, stable, searchable collection.

Every item is enriched with standard metadata and assigned a persistent identifier, ensuring it remains findable and citable. Content is available for indexing by other discovery services like Google Scholar.

A living collection

The Open Collection continues to grow as new content comes under threat. If you know of endangered websites or materials in urgent need of preservation, regardless of geography, we want to hear from you.

The Policy Commons 2025 Open Collection is open to all, through simple registration.