DocumentCloud is a platform, catalog and tool where users uploaded documents through the Thomson Reuters OpenCalais (a text processor that provides Entities, Topic codes, Events, Relations and SocialTags). The tools provides users with access to extensive information about the people, places and organizations mentioned in the submitted document. The webpage for the resource describes the platform capabilities as those which "turn documents into data".
DocumentCloud contains court filings, hearing transcripts, testimony, legislation, reports, memos, meeting minutes, and correspondence and other documents in their public catalog.
Using DocumentCloud, it is possible to extract all of the dates in a document and plot them on a comprehensive timeline. Using the timeline, users can discover documents related to the story and explore links to the original reporting. Documents can be annotated to highlight key passages with public notes that cab be part of the published reporting, and private notes for personal or internal use. Every note has a unique URL, so readers can be pointed to a particular passage.
When users upload documents to the platform they remain private until made public by the author. The services provides the document viewer that users cab use to embed documents on their own websites.