Joint Publications Research Service
Encyclopedia
The Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS) was a United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 government defense-funded organization that was absorbed into the Foreign Broadcast Information Service
Foreign Broadcast Information Service
Foreign Broadcast Information Service was an open source intelligence component of the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Science and Technology. It monitored, translated, and disseminated within the U.S. government openly available news and information from media sources outside the...

 (FBIS) but its funding and personnel did not transfer. For all practical purposes it ceased its massive operations (80,000 reports since 1957) in 1970, and gradually wound down to virtually nothing under FBIS by 1997.

Both FBIS and JPRS are notable representatives of the value of Open Source Intelligence
Open source intelligence
Open-source intelligence is a form of intelligence collection management that involves finding, selecting, and acquiring information from publicly available sources and analyzing it to produce actionable intelligence...

 or OSINT, but also examples of how poorly funded such endeavors can be when the emphasis remains on secrecy and technology instead of openness.

According to FBIS, access to current and past JPRS reports is possible via World News Connection
World News Connection
World News Connection is the online offering from the Open Source Center that replaces the hard-copy regionally-oriented "pink books" that used to be among the most prized government publications among academics, who received them free...

. In 2011, Readex
Readex
Readex has published numerous collections of primary source research materials, first as Readex Microprint Corporation and since 1984 as a division of NewsBank....

, a division of NewsBank, announced its plans to create a digital edition entitled Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS) Reports, 1957-1994.
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