Frequently Asked Questions

Is this archive the same as the DOJ/Purdue Pharma public document repository? 

In June 2024 the US Supreme Court ruled against the proposed bankruptcy settlement for Purdue Pharma. Although the proposed plan – which included a provision for document disclosure – has now been rejected, UCSF and JHU remain eager to contribute their expertise in public health, digital archives, and information technology to enable free public access to document sets which may be released in a renegotiated Purdue settlement or in other opioid litigation.

How much will the archive cost and how will it be funded? 

The cost of the archive greatly depends upon the volume of documents to be included (as yet unknown). The Truth Tobacco Industry Documents Library at UCSF was established in 2001 with a $15 million gift from the American Legacy Foundation (now Truth Initiative) using funds from the tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. It initially included 40 million pages, and now contains more than 93 million pages. The public [opioids] archive was created and funded in part through settlements of public interest lawsuits by states. In addition, both universities are pursuing various options, including grants and philanthropic gifts.

Can I use documents or media clips in my project? 

You can use these materials for a non-commercial project if it falls under ‘Fair Use.’ Please see Copyright and Fair Use for more information.

Can I download a large batch of PDF documents all at once? 

Please contact us at industrydocuments@ucsf.edu if you are interested in large downloads of PDFs. For batch downloads of records/metadata, you can query our Solr index directly using an API. We also provide data sets containing metadata and OCR text for our entire corpus. Please see Industry Documents Library API and Data Set for more information and documentation.

Do you make your entire database of documents available? Is there an API? 

You can query our Solr index directly using an API. We also provide data sets containing metadata and OCR text for our entire corpus. Please see Industry Documents Library API and Data Set for more information and documentation.