Editorial method and technical reading template

Mandatory fields of a publication

Each field is filled with reviewed information or it is not filled at all. It is not approximated, not inferred and not replaced by wording that merely sounds equivalent.

Mandatory fields of a technical publication

Type of piece

Development note, method note, scoped demonstration, evaluation case, capability or method page, or technical reference. It is an editorial classification, not a level of validation.

Primary pillar

One of the four pillars of the archive. Secondary pillars are declared only when they are material to the question or the method.

Evidence status

A single primary value: conceptual, documentary review, synthetic data, simulation, bench test, field measurement, mixed evidence or pending validation.

Artefact and version

Identifier and version of the artefact, model, procedure or tool examined. If the version is not documented, it is declared as not documented.

Technical owner

Publishable role or identity of whoever answers for the content and of whoever reviews it. Names, titles and credentials are not published without confirmation and authorisation.

Review date

ISO 8601 date of the technical review, together with the publication date and, where applicable, the update date. Without known dates the piece does not become published.

Engineering question

The situation, variable, decision or limit under examination. It does not attribute a problem, an impact or a need to an installation or third party that is not documented.

Method and evidence

Assumptions, procedure, inputs, outputs, configuration and any applicable human review, together with the class of evidence supporting each statement.

Limits

A concrete list of the inferences the piece does not support, missing data, ranges not covered, known uncertainty and pending validations.

Figure: provenance, alt text and caption

Every informative figure declares its origin or authorisation, an alt text carrying the information that would be lost without the image, and a caption with conditions, units and evidence base.

Sources

Each source states its type (primary, method, third party, standard or artefact), its reference, its version or date and its review status. A URL without provenance does not support a claim.

Verifiable next step

The pending validation, measurement, version or authorisation. It promises no date, integration, availability or performance.

If a field cannot be supported by a reviewed source, the piece stays internal. It is not published with the field empty, approximated or filled in by inference, and the missing datum is not simulated with a placeholder visible to the reader.

Evidence statuses

The evidence status is a controlled value, visible both in the record and in the body of the piece. A simulation is not called a bench test and synthetic data is not called a measurement.

• Conceptual: describes an idea, a mental model or a scheme, with no result of our own.
• Documentary review: rests on identified external sources, not on our own observations.
• Synthetic data: data built to illustrate a case, with its recipe and assumptions stated.
• Simulation: outputs of a model, with tool, version, inputs and boundary conditions.
• Bench test: a bench measurement, with setup, instrument, procedure and units.
• Field measurement: observation in an operating environment, with period, context and acquisition method.
• Mixed evidence: the piece lists which part belongs to each category and in what order it was used.
• Pending validation: cannot be published as a result; it stays an internal record.

Figure contract

No informative figure is published without provenance, alt text and caption. A figure cannot support a claim that the text, the method and the sources do not allow.

• Provenance: origin, authorisation or licence, and the evidence base it represents.
• Alt text: the information that would be lost without the image, not the phrase "chart of".
• Caption: what it shows, under which conditions, in which units and with which main limit.
• Permitted reading: what can be observed and the inference that must not be drawn.

Where it applies