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 that are 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 allowing users to 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 and scholarly publishers, academic research centers, NGOs, think tanks, and government departments and agencies.

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

A suite of additional tools 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 in the Commons searchable on your site
Impact and research data

Please contact us at the email 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
Paying particular attention to orphan materials from inactive organizations

How can I view the coverage of my organization? Register at the appropriate Commons website, or contact us at the email below. You’ll receive free access for a limited number of searches. How can I improve coverage for my organization? Please contact us at the email below, and we’ll be happy to discuss how to do this. How can I remove coverage of my website? We'll 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 by contacting: