The Methods described here go into greater detail, but remain consistent with, the original Iraq Body Count Methodology published in 2003, and reflect the experience IBC has gained over the intervening years.
Note that these Methods apply only to IBC’s formal output, and not to other material such as the Recent Events interim updates to the database, or to comment pieces – except where these are directly informed by, or reference, the formal work.
1 Currently, the publicly accessible IBC database systematically shows the following incident details from the table in Methods 3.1 whenever available: Date, Time, Place, Target, Minimum and Maximum deaths, Weapons, and select Media sources.
In addition, when specific person-related information is available, we include the "For each person" information listed in the table.
A separate, browseable list providing details of individuals identified by family name is also provided.
As resources permit, more IBC-extracted variables will be progressively brought online.
4. Published output
4.1 Citations
Many news web sites remove stories from public access after a given period, or move them to different URLs. IBC cannot maintain these links, nor has it obtained reproduction rights, and consequently neither publishes original URLs of press and media reports nor re-publishes the reports themselves. Instead it provides abbreviations of the names of the principal sources for each incident, and the date on which the information was published. For archival and data-verification purposes, IBC stores the full text of each report it has collected in an offline archive (see 4.2 below).
Iraq Body Count retains copyright over all material published on its web site (see our Conditions of Use).
The project intends to make its published material available indefinitely on the web, removing the need for its output to be made available through third parties.
4.2 Data storage and dissemination
The IBC archive comprises two main components. The first component is an electronic store of all distinct original press and media sources discovered. This is organised by date, and cross-referenced by the unique IBC code for each incident. Where judged appropriate, data from this store can be released to bona-fide enquirers for research and verification purposes. The second component is a dynamic searchable database containing the 18 key variables identified in 3.1 above, for each identified death.1 This database generates the regularly updated analyses and data-summaries which are made available on the public IBC website and whose cumulative total to date is fed to the IBC web-counters. This database also generates CSV data files (spreadsheets) which are available for download via the Database home page.
Once verified through the processes described in Section 3 of Methods, each new incident is added to the online database, updating it on the website. The upper and lower range of the IBC total is also fed automatically to all remotely positioned IBC web-counters placed on personal and other participating websites.