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Research with sources

Build a current, traceable brief from an approved source set.

Editorial owner
VMCSoft Digital
Last reviewed
2026-11-06
Review by
2027-02-04
Editorial content risk
highPublishing review classification—not your task assessment.

Purpose

Build a current, traceable brief from an approved source set. The workflow is acceptable only while its evidence, permission, review, and stop boundaries remain true.

Prerequisites

  • A defined question, scope, and freshness window for each fact type.
  • A source-quality rule, such as “a vendor’s own page is authoritative for its own price”.
  • A reviewer who can open every cited source.

Worked example

This example uses a fictional vendor.

Item Record
Claim C3 “Acme Analytics’ Team plan costs $24 per user per month, billed annually.”
Source S2 Acme Analytics pricing page (primary). Passage: “Team — $24/user/month, billed annually.” Observed 2026-11-06.
Source S5 Industry blog, March 2026: “Team costs $20/user/month.”
Conflict S2 and S5 disagree. S2 is primary and newer, so C3 cites S2 and the brief records S5 as superseded.
Freshness Prices use a 30-day window; S2 must be re-observed before the brief is reused after 2026-12-06.

Procedure

  1. Write the question, the material claims it needs, the freshness window, and the authority rule before searching.
  2. Retrieve sources and record each passage with its source, version or date, and observation date.
  3. Build a claims table: each material claim, its supporting passage, and pass, conflict, or unsupported status.
  4. Resolve conflicts with the authority rule, or keep the claim unresolved and say so; never average two figures.
  5. The reviewer opens each passage, confirms it supports the claim, and signs off the claims table.

Deterministic and review checks

  • Each material claim has at least one passage that directly supports it.
  • Each observation date falls inside the freshness window for that fact type.
  • Each conflict is resolved by the written authority rule or reported as unresolved.

A case that must fail

“Acme is the market leader” has no supporting passage. It is removed or labelled unsupported; it is not softened into “one of the leading vendors”.

Human boundary

The reviewer accepts the claims table, and the brief’s owner decides how it is used. Retrieval does not make a claim true.

Stop and escalation

  • Do not fill evidence gaps with plausible language.
  • Escalate conflicting authoritative sources.