The OSINT Library

On this page we collect academic and professional books, articles and papers on the (wider) topic of Open Source Intelligence. These have been collected and collated based on continuous keyword searches and snowballing. Some publications are already a bit older and might not contain current content (anymore). These however remain on the list for historical purposes to show the development of OSINT within the intelligence studies discipline. Others may have a title in which the word OSINT does not appear, however, rest assured, all articles and books in some form or way relate to the methodical collection and exploitation of information from publicly available sources to fulfil an intelligence requirement.

Obviously, this page is never finished, so you may want to revisit sometimes (pro tip: use VisualPing to monitor this page for changes). Suggestions for titles to include are welcome, especially from before the year 2000 when OSINT was still emerging, and especially also publications in languages other than English as the list (and the OSINT field) currently seems somewhat Anglocentric.

Where possible we will include a link to the original source and otherwise the articles / books are available via your (university) library or a proper search. If you really cannot find a specific article, feel free to contact me. [last updated: 8 Oktober 2025]

Techniques

This section contains the publications which are focussed more on collection techniques, often with an overlap into digital forensics.