Welcome!

Introduction

The open source intelligence (OSINT) bibliography was compiled to help OSINT professionals and beginners on their way to learn the finer art of doing OSINT research and to establish their own OSINT production capability.

The bibliography contains titles of reports, papers, books and articles that describe OSINT in the below definition. Links point to the full text in most cases, or to a acquisition page of the publisher.

The format choosen is FOBID ISBD formal cataloging rules.

OSINT

OSINT is a standardised, collaborative, integrated methodology and production process where customers' intelligence requirements are met by providing them with actionable intelligence that is produced through a process of synthesis and analysis based on a representative selection of open source information that is validated, reliable, timely, and accurate.

Open source information (OSINF), also called simply open sources, is all information in any format that can be acquired by anyone without any restrictions, whether for free or commercial, in a legal and ethically acceptable way.

Really important to note here that OSINT is a methodology. It is not a tool, trick, information source or whatever. There is no such thing as OSINT tools, or OSINT hacking, or finding something 'in the OSINT'. This bibliography is therefor about OSINT.

I developed an OSINT production branch for the Dutch defense intelligence service in the early nineties, to head that bureau until 2013 when I resigned.

A bibliography?

Just a little word about a bibliography and a catalogue. Both are lists of documents in a particular order, usually with indexes to allow searching on alternative entries.

A bibliography lists the document without explaining where and how to acutally retrieve the documents. The intention of a bibliography is to alert the customer on the existence of documents, that's it. A catalogue also lists documents, but in this case with a reference as to where exactly to find the document.

Following these definitions, it is clear that the title 'bibliography' is misleading since I have URLs pointing to the location of the documents. This website should theoretically be called OSINT catalogue indeed.

Finally, a document. That phrase is used for reports, books, papers, websites, articles, etc. Officially, a document is any object that is intended to derive information from, or is assigned that purpose. The latter is very important, when someone can derive information from a broken wineglass, that wineglass is considered a document and can therefore be catalogued. Strange? Not when you are a policeman/woman collecting evidence.

Design of the bibliography

There is a main bibliography 'main entry catalogue' in the left panel and indexes in the right panel.

The main entry catalogue holds the entire bibliography, all titles. The FOBID ISBD cataloguing rules are used in the design of the bibliography. There are nine indexes to the catalogue. All indexes point to the main entry catalogue:

• SERIES. This is an index on serial titles and number ;
• CROSS. This is a cross index on titlewords, authornames and keywords ;
• PUBLISHERS. This is the index on publisher names
• AUTHORS. This is the index on authornames. Each author has an entry in this index. Editors, foreword writers and the like are also considered authors.
• CORPS. Is the index on corporate authors, institutes, organisations and the like.
• DATES. This is the index on publication date, limited to publication year, in reverse order.
• KEYWORDS. Index on each keyword assigned to the title. This is work in progress, since I am considering implementing a simplified version of the PRECIS system here.
• JOURNALS. Is the index on journames
• KWIC. This is the world famous KeyWord In Context (KWIC) index invented by Hans Peter Luhn in 1960. Here, for each title by using a horizontal shifting procedure, an entry is created on each titleword except stopwords.

Titles in the main entry catalogue either link to the full text (preferably) or to a descrioption of the work or an online fee-based version. Titles are arragned following the FOBID ISBD main entry cataloguing system rules.

How to use

The main entry catalogue holds all the titles in alphabetical order of main entry. The easiest way to search is to know your authorname. If that fails, try one of the indexes. If you are addicted to search engines, I am not planning of putting one in since there is no need for it. Use ctrl-f if you must.

Here is a modest search plan how to proceed when using a bibliography or catalogue. Or, indeed, simply reading a paper:

If a title holds:

1. An authorname,
   1. Look up other titles by the same author (see Author Index)
   2. Check social media for account and possible blogposts or other posts about the authors' work. For each social medium:
      1. Check the persons that are being followed by the author to find other experts. Check each one for relevancy. Continue with 1. Prevent an eternal loop by continuously checking your requirement analysis.
      2. Check the persons that are following the author. Check each one for relevancy. Continue with 1. Prevent an eternal loop by continuously checking your requirement analysis.
      3. Do a modest network analysis: who posts the most, most frequent, most often, most relevant, about the relevant subjects.
   3. Check union catalogues for other works by the author. Like http://www.worldcat.org
   4. Do a citation search in one of the leading citation indexes, such as the Science Citation Index (Clarivate) or https://www.scopus.com/home.uri
2. Co-authors,
   1. look up other titles by the same co-author (see Author Index)
   2. Continue with 1
3. Publisher(s),
   1. Look up what other titles were published by that publisher
   2. For each title, note the authors, co-authors, editors, editorial staff and continue with 1
   3. Look up the profile of the publisher, what is in the portfolio, authors, subjects, conferences, journals?
4. Journal name,
   1. Look up other relevant titles in that journal (see journalname index)
   2. Check the journal profile, establish purpose, goals, subjects
   3. Look up other authors that publish in that journal. Continue with 1 for each
   4. Look up the editors or editorial staff. Continue with 1 for each of them
5. A serial title,
   1. Look up what other titles have been published in that series
   2. For each title, look up the authors. Continue with 1
   3. Check the series editor and editorial staff. Continue with 1 for each
6. Conference proceedings,
   1. Check speakers, panelmembers, attendees for relevancy
   2. Check the chairmen, editors, editorial board and continue with 1
   3. Check other proceedings of the same conference if it is a annual one.
7. References, sources, foot- endnotes,
   1. Check the references in the back for relevancy. Continue with step 1-6
   2. Check the footnotes, endnotes and sources for relevancy. Continue with step 1-6

And for each step obviously establish relevancy and useability before proceeding. Make, and keep, notes of relevant AND irrelevant material

Additionally, always consult your librarian and professors.