Just as a quick easy test, I decided to find out which of The Dupuy Institue (TDI) reports are on the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). Our report list is here: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/tdipub3.htm
We are a private company, but most of these reports were done under contract for the U.S. government. In my past searches of the DTIC file, I found that maybe 40% of Trevor Dupuy’s HERO reports were at DTIC. So, I would expect that a few of the TDI would be filed at DTIC.
TDI has 80 reports listed on its site. There are 0Â listed on DTIC under our name.
There are a significant number of reports listed based upon our work, but a search on “Dupuy Institute” yields no actual reports done by us. I searched for a few of our reports by name (combat in cities, situational awareness, enemy prisoner of war, our insurgency work, our Bosnia casualty estimate) and found four:
This was four of eight reports we did as part of the Capture Rate Study. So apparently one of the contract managers was diligent enough to make sure those studies were placed in DTIC (as was our Kursk Data Base), but since then (2001), none of our reports have been placed in DTIC.
Now, I have not checked NTIS and other sources, but I have reason to believe that not much of what we have done in the last 20+ years is archived in government repositories. If you need a copy of a TDI report, you have to come to us.
We are a private company. What happens when we decide to close our doors?
You could always put it up on the open web, if it is unclassified, in an archival site at a college or university.
There are lots of things I could do to protect the holdings….but, the point is, that the government has contracted and paid for these reports, and they have not protected them. It is not only TDI’s work, but the work of many other private contractors. There is an industry wide issue here.
Obviously at some point, I intend to secure the TDI files and reports in some permanent status, either through the Army War College library, some DC area university, or by securing the long-term health of the Dupuy Institute. But…..as you will see from the stories I have posted and several other stories that I am about to post, this has not always happened in the past. There is a bigger problem here.
Of course, if I get hit by a bus before I “get-a-round-tuit” then there is another problem.
That is depressing. All that original research lost, and in an age when we consider ourselves information rich. I wounder how widespread this phenomena is.
Widespread enough that I am concerned about it. More posts to come.