Coherent Digital

Coherent Commons are thematic portals that index and archive content for researchers, students, faculty and professionals. They’re editorially vetted and provide rich, in-depth indexing. They combine licensed materials behind a paywall with high quality, openly available content. The result is a comprehensive, authoritative source of critical information with links to the associated websites that host it.

Each Commons includes an organizational directory so users can find critical organizations in a discipline. For example, Policy Commons includes over 40,000 policy organizations around the world. It also includes a searchable index to their associated websites, and an archive to be used in the event a link breaks.

We use “organizations” as an umbrella term to cover the myriad publishers found in Commons, including trade/scholarly publishers, academic research centers, NGOs, think tanks and government departments and agencies.

Where an organization makes its content freely available online, the publications included in Commons are linked to the organization site, which drives increased traffic to the site from influential audiences. The membership of Policy Commons includes thousands of policy professionals including academics, students, parliamentary researchers and policymakers. Organizations who wish to charge for their content are invited to license their content for inclusion in Commons and receive royalties in return. When an organization site becomes inactive, Commons makes its archive available, providing continuity and backup.

Our index includes traditional library cataloging, permalinks and other apparatus so that content can easily be cited and made part of the scholarly record. Some organizations also grant us permission to license their records to academic institutions for long term preservation.

We have a suite of additional tools that can be custom tailored such as:

Thematic feeds of metadata for you to deploy on your site. For example, you can add links to reports for your website from other parties.
Content enrichment such as conversion and indexing of tables
A search widget that makes your content on the Commons searchable on your site
Impact and research data

Please contact us at the e-mail below for more information.

How do we select organizations for indexing and archiving? Each Commons has an editor who selects organizations for inclusion. This is done by:

Consulting leading directories that document such organizations
Responding to requests from individual members of the Commons
Research by our editors
Ensuring material is relevant to research, teaching and advocacy
Ensuring material is factually correct
We pay particular attention to orphan materials from inactive organizations

How can I view the coverage of my organization? Register at the appropriate Commons website. You’ll receive free access for a limited number of searches of the database, or contact us at the e-mail below. How can I improve coverage for my organization? Please contact us at the e-mail below and we’ll be happy to discuss how to do this. How can I remove coverage of my website? We will honor requests to remove archived content. Please contact information@coherentdigital.net

To learn more Our editors welcome engagement! Please let us know any ideas or concerns you have as follows: