Coherent Digital – New database with research from Oceania

[Brisbane, Australia] – Coherent Digital today announced the launch of a major new resource to collect, preserve, and disseminate critical research from Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands.

Policy Commons: Oceania includes over one million research reports, statistical manuals, surveys, and other grey literature from national, state, and local governments, think tanks, associations, and nonprofit organisations.  It’s more than twenty times the size of existing regional grey-literature databases, with coverage of more than 2,000 organisations ranging from the largest governments to the smallest nonprofits. Particular attention is paid to Pacific Island organisations, whose unique content is frequently lost and almost always deprecated by search engines. The resulting file enables diversity, equity, and inclusion for research in the region.

“Most government portals focus on consumers, not researchers,” explained Julie Stevens, Coherent’s Director of Asia-Pacific. “The sites are designed to provide easy access to official information for lay people, often removing outdated material.” In contrast, Policy Commons: Oceania provides regional research information on critical subjects ranging from agriculture reports to zoning legislation, and it includes materials from defunct organisations and departments, accessible through sophisticated search tools. “The resource was created to make research much faster and far more comprehensive,” said Stevens.

Toby Green, the product’s publisher, said, “Our long-term commitment to provide deep coverage of content from organisations throughout Oceania reflects the importance of the region’s research output. We look forward to working with customers as we develop additional resources.  We’re excited to be adding this material not just to this collection, but also to other collections in the Policy Commons portfolio. Customers will be able to select either regional or global coverage.”