Founding Commitments
Four rules, embedded in the Institute's governing documents, define everything we publish. They are not aspirations or policies subject to revision by convenience — they are the Institute's organizational law, stated here so that any reader can hold us to them.
Founding Commitments
Embedded in the Institute's governing documents
- Standardized and identical.
Every output is standardized and identical for every user. No edition, dataset, framework, or analysis is prepared for, adapted to, or withheld from any particular reader.
- Open at the core.
Core outputs — datasets, methodologies, model instruments, and executive findings — are published open-access under Creative Commons licensing.
- Published, uniform, non-exclusive terms.
Where an edition carries a subscription price, its rates are published, uniform, and non-exclusive. No reader receives terms another cannot.
- No commissioned work. Ever.
The Institute accepts no commissioned, client-specific, or bespoke engagements of any kind. It does not provide advisory, representation, or client services. This limitation is a rule of the Institute's organizational documents, not a policy preference.
These commitments make the Institute's benefits public by architecture — not by promise.
What each commitment guarantees
§ 1 guarantees neutrality
Because every output is identical for every user, no reader — however large, well-funded, or well-connected — can shape a finding, obtain an edition others cannot, or receive analysis tailored to a position. What the judge reads, the litigant reads. What the agency reads, the public reads.
§ 2 guarantees public benefit
Open-access publication of datasets, methodologies, and model instruments means the Institute's benefits accrue to the national institutional fabric — courts, agencies, employers, school systems, researchers — rather than to any subscriber list.
§ 3 guarantees equal footing
Where a full analytical edition carries a subscription price, that price is published and the same for everyone. There are no negotiated rates, no exclusive windows, and no privileged access of any kind.
§ 4 guarantees independence
Because no one can commission our work, no one can direct it. The research agenda is set by public criteria — federal designations, published enforcement priorities, and documented doctrinal gaps — and by nothing else.
How to use the Institute's work
- Adopt the instruments
- Model policies, surveys, protocols, and training materials are published for direct adoption. Download, adapt under the license, implement. No contact with the Institute is required — or expected.
- Use the data
- Datasets and replication files are released without charge to enforcement agencies, researchers, journalists, importers, and the public alike.
- Subscribe at published rates
- Institutions that want the Monitor's full analytical volumes subscribe at the same published, uniform rates as everyone else.