Updates: December 2024

[IntelArchive User Group]

Dear all,

Welcome to the December 2024 update of IntelArchive. As we approach the end of the year, it's a great time to reflect on IntelArchive 2024.

2024 was a brilliant year for IntelArchive. Firstly, it now has a new name. As you might probably know, the previous name of this source, 'Intelligence Studies Network' has been changed to 'IntelArchive' with a new domain intelarchive.io. Stay tuned for a new logo!

IntelArchive is now active on social media. It is currently available on Bluesky and X/Twitter to share the latest additions to the database. If you're on social media, please follow us to see the recent publications on intelligence. 

For the first time in 2024, we made the entire dataset available on Zenodo where it is regularly updated. Zenodo is a perfect platform for sharing and accessing datasets, enabling users to explore and analyze the IntelArchive collection according to their interests.

The growth of the database has reached its peak in 2024. Over 5,000 items have been added to the database in 2024. Considering the database contains 7,590 publications, this is a remarkable milestone, meaning that additions in 2024 surpass the total number of additions made over the previous four years combined (see the chart below).

The growth is not limited to the IntelArchive database. Publications on intelligence that have been growing steadily for over a century peaked in 2024 with 960 publications. 

The most common theme in IntelArchive in 2024 was 'Global intelligence', meaning that studies on non-British and American intelligence continued to grow. It's great to see that intelligence studies are becoming more global, slowly moving away from the global north-centric (see the chart below).

Journal article is unsurprisingly the most common type of publication followed by newspaper articles and book chapters. Discussions on intelligence are also being shared in non-academic venues, providing convenient platforms for comments on current affairs.

For the first time in 20 years, the ratio of open access articles has surpassed that of non-OA access articles. This is a good indicator that growing awareness and supportive policies around open access are yielding results (chart below).

Another interesting trend, shown in the below bar chart, is the increase of multiple authorship on papers. The gap between the ratio of single vs multiple-authored publications has been narrowing, suggesting collaboration is becoming increasingly common in intelligence studies.

IntelArchive has seen incredible growth this year, both in the size of its database and the addition of new functionalities on the website. Our goal is to become the largest curated database on intelligence studies, and it’s exciting to see this vision coming to life. We'll continue to add new publications, share updates with you, and change the website by adding new functions in 2025.

Please share this email widely with those who might be interested. 

I wish you a happy New Year. See you in the next update.

Best wishes,

Yusuf

[Archishman]

Dear Yusuf,

Hope all well. My name's Archishman, and I'm a new joinee to this group. I'm a second-year MPhil International Relations student at the University of Oxford, currently working on a thesis on the relationship between clandestine diplomacy, and the importance it is afforded within decision-making under conditions of diplomatic recognition or non-recognition. I'm looking to expand on this research with a view towards a DPhil project on intelligence diplomacy more broadly, examining intelligence liaision and strategic intelligence disclosure as other variants of this area of statecraft.

Writing first of all, to thank you for setting up this archive- it's been an invaluable tool for researchers such as myself looking into this subject. Also wanted to ask if it might be possible to perhaps to add two new collections to the archive- on intelligence liaison, and on strategic intelligence disclosure- either as independent categories, or within the special collections? As you might be aware, these are both growing areas of research within intelligence studies, and it would be a huge help for anyone such as myself hoping to write on these subjects. Please do let me know if possible.

Again, many thanks for creating the IntelArchive- it's a fantastic tool, and I hope to make a lot more use of it in the weeks and months to come.

Best wishes,

Archishman 

[IntelArchive User Group]

Dear  Archishman,

Many thanks for your email and suggestion. 

It's great and encouraging to hear that IntelArchive is helpful for your research.

As a general rule, I consider creating a new collection when there is clear interest and a solid number of relevant publications (typically at least 20). If the number of items exceeds 100, I usually set up a standalone collection.

The two collections you proposed sound promising, and I’d be happy to explore them further. If you have a list of relevant publications, please feel free to share it with me via email.

Best wishes,

Yusuf