[F]inal reports of important commission have been supplemented by publication of the public and private hearings, staff reports and the actual documents used to compile the findings. Take a look at the shelf space occupied by some major probes since 1945: these include the 1946 congressional inquiry into the Pearl Harbor attack (40 volumes); the 1964 Warren Commission investigation of President Kennedy's assassination (27); and the 1975-76 Church Committee investigation of the intelligence agencies (15). By contrast, the 9/11 Commission climaxed in the publication of a single, 567-page volume --without an index. The relative poverty of this effort at the culmination of a twenty-month, $14 million investigation reflects a downward trend in the government's obligation to disseminate information to the public....The 9/11 Commission's first departure from customary practice was its decision not to use the GPO....
[W]hat the 9/11 Commission chose not to publish at all is at least equally remarkable. Comparable investigations have made available at least some portion of the raw information upon which the respective reports were erected, even at the risk of challenging the very conclusions a particular report might have drawn. The Warren Commission, for example, decided it was far better to present the entirety of the evidence in all its rich complexity than be charged with hiding information. Other, comparable panels have weighed the evidentiary part of their responsibility differently, but in no instance was a final report released without publication of some portion of the primary documents accumulated during the investigation. This is the only method by which the public can assess the accumulated evidence and judge the soundness of the investigation itself. The overwhelming majority of records cited in the 9/11 Report are not only unpublished --worse yet, by the commissioners' collective hand they are closed to the public until at least January 2009....What is the meaning of opening the files, now in the possession of the National Archives, only after January 2009? Well, that is the month that a new president will be inaugurated, which means vital information will have been denied at least through the November 2008 election.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/01/2005 09:03:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
