Editorial Standards

Editorial posture

• Nonpartisan, non-ideological, evidence-led, practical, and respectful.
• Claims, evidence, context, language, and methods are analysed consistently, regardless of the identity of the source.
• Fact, inference, assumption, judgment, and uncertainty are distinguished.
• Difficult concepts are explained in plain language without becoming simplistic.
• All writing is original.

Sourcing

• Substantive factual claims that depend on external information carry a numbered citation such as [1] and a matching entry in a References section at the foot of the page.
• References link directly to the primary or authoritative source wherever one is publicly reachable. We do not cite a summary of a study when the study itself is available.
• Academic and technical material uses APA style. General and editorial material uses MLA style.
• Where a page relies only on constructed examples and standard reasoning, it says so plainly rather than adding citations for appearance.
• We do not publish a citation we have not opened. A fabricated or unchecked citation is treated as a serious error, not a formatting problem.

Confidence and proportionality

The strength of language must match the strength of the evidence. Where a study supports a narrower claim than the one a reader might draw, we state the narrower claim and name the gap.

Reports carry an explicit confidence level with the basis stated. Articles and lessons state limitations in the text rather than in a disclaimer.

Dates, authorship, and revision

• Every content page shows its publication date and, where relevant, its update date.
• The publication date is never changed to make material appear new. Substantive revisions get a separate update date.
• Author and, where applicable, reviewer information is shown on the page.
• Toolkit resources additionally carry a version number and a review date, because they are printed and circulate away from the site.

What we will not publish

• Invented statistics, quotations, citations, testimonials, or case studies.
• Unverifiable factual case studies presented as real.
• Claims about our own reach, impact, or partnerships that we cannot evidence.
• Ratings of individual news outlets or publishers.
• Adjudications of live political disputes.
• Fear-based messaging, or framing ordinary disagreement as disinformation.
• Content that identifies or targets a private individual.
• Download links for files that do not exist.

Images

• Source, creator, licence, and alt text are recorded for every externally sourced image before it is used.
• Third-party images are not hotlinked.
• Informative images carry contextual alt text. Purely decorative images carry empty alt text so that screen readers skip them.
• Where licensed photography is not available, we use original abstract illustration rather than images of uncertain provenance.

Style

• Plain language. Specialized terms defined at first use.
• No em dash characters in site copy, a house convention that keeps punctuation consistent across printed and screen-read versions.
• Descriptive link text that names the destination or the benefit.
• External links are visually distinguished and do not open new tabs without reason.

Holding us to this

If a page appears to breach any of the above, report it through thecorrections process or write toinfo@arac-international.org. Reports that identify a specific claim and a specific standard are acted on fastest.

These standards are reviewed at least annually and whenever a correction reveals a gap in them.