An Air Force technical report, known by two titles and closeted from public view not once but twice, was freed of restrictions via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the staff of the Paul V. Galvin Library in 2015. This allowed the report to be scanned and posted online as part of... Show moreAn Air Force technical report, known by two titles and closeted from public view not once but twice, was freed of restrictions via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the staff of the Paul V. Galvin Library in 2015. This allowed the report to be scanned and posted online as part of Galvin's Contrails digital initiative. This presentation follows the history of the report and its importance in the field of hemodynamics. The report has been cited under one title at least 200 times, and under the other title at least 100 times, and continues to be cited under both titles to the present day. Theories are presented that explain the emergence of the two varying titles, the role of government restrictions on public availability of the report played in the continued inconsistency of citations, and the variation of the patterns of citations based on the type of publications in which the report was cited. In summation, this presentation will provide an anecdotal example of the damage inflicted on scientific research by arbitrary government restrictions on the availability of taxpayer funded research, illustrating the value of the successful FOIA request. Show less
