Research method

This page describes the research method shared by Briefings and Reviews at the level already supported by the project. Topic-specific procedures can be added when real work requires them. Creating or revising a Concept remains a separate process, even when a Briefing or Review links to it.

Select a candidate

Before scoring a candidate, confirm that it can become a bounded public document. It must have a narrow answerable question, direct appropriate sources, a feasible research scope, and uncertainty that can be represented honestly. Revise or defer a candidate that does not pass this gate; a high priority score does not compensate for an unanswerable or uncheckable question.

Eligible candidates initially receive equal editorial weight on three criteria:

• personal curiosity and the motivation to sustain the work,
• scientific or technical importance, and
• transferability to further learning, related research, or practical computational and engineering skills.

These criteria guide internal selection rather than the public framing of a page. Compare the expected and actual value of the first three publications with the user’s feedback before changing the weighting.

1. Define the question

Start with a question narrow enough to investigate. Record what would count as an answer, which terms are ambiguous, and what is outside scope.

For a developing topic, distinguish the date of the source from the date of the event or result being described.

2. Build a source trail

Use discovery tools to locate candidate material, then move toward the most direct available evidence. Search results and summaries help locate sources; they are not substitutes for the source itself.

Record enough provenance to return to the material later:

• title,
• author or responsible organization,
• publication or revision date,
• stable URL or document identifier, and
• the exact claim or passage for which the source is relevant.

3. Check the evidence

Compare the claim with the source at the appropriate level of precision. A source that supports a broad trend may not support a specific number, mechanism, or causal claim.

For important claims, check whether another independent or more authoritative source changes the interpretation. See Publishing.

4. Synthesize without flattening uncertainty

Organize the evidence into an explanation while preserving:

• disagreement between sources,
• limits of the available evidence,
• assumptions introduced by interpretation, and
• questions that remain unresolved.

Do not turn a candidate explanation into a settled fact merely to make the narrative smoother.

5. Choose the document role

• Use a Briefing when the work introduces one or several recent papers or official developments by date at a moderate depth.
• Use a Paper Review when the work examines one paper, preprint, or tightly bounded research contribution in substantially more detail, including its evidence, assumptions, methods, comparisons, and limits.
• Use a Topic Review when the work reconstructs a research topic, theory, or research program across multiple contributions.

Keep the source trail close to the claims it supports, preserve important limits or unresolved questions in the reader-facing account, and make four things easy to find:

1. the question, development, contribution, or topic being examined,
2. why it matters,
3. the evidence that supports the account, and
4. the limits of what can currently be concluded.

Write for a STEM-educated reader who may not specialize in the page’s field. Keep equations and technical material needed for the central argument in the main text, define symbols and assumptions, and explain what they mean for the claim being made. Extended derivations, implementation details, additional tables, and sensitivity checks may move to an appendix, but central evidence, conclusions, and important uncertainty remain in the main account.

When durable reusable background is needed, link to the relevant Concept. When the document’s object is itself a multi-paper research topic, theory, or research program, use a Topic Review rather than expanding a Concept beyond one reusable idea.

6. Editorial check and approval

Before a Briefing or Review becomes public, review the reasoning, source links, quotations, terminology, cross-links, and reader-facing structure. A human gives explicit approval for publication.

Research tools and sites

No shared register of approved research services has been adopted yet. Candidate services should be documented in Research tools and sites only after their role, limitations, and canonical-link behavior have been checked.