Editorial standards

Start with a question and evidence

A story should have a clear subject, a reason for readers to care and an account of what supports its claims. We favour identifiable sources, original documents and relevant expertise where available. Other reporting should be credited and linked so readers can follow the record.

A source may support one claim without establishing another. We should distinguish what a study found from what an author infers, identify significant limitations and avoid making a headline more certain than the evidence. Dates, names, quotations and numerical claims need checking before publication.

Make the kind of work clear

News and explainers should distinguish established facts from disputed claims. Analysis should show how an interpretation follows from evidence. Reviews and opinion may take a position, but factual assertions within them still require care. Personal essays should be framed as an individual’s experience, with appropriate checking of claims involving others.

We do not invent interviews, quotations, survey results, sources or firsthand experience. When evidence is incomplete, the uncertainty belongs in the story.

Credit the work and the people

Writers should acknowledge reporting, research and ideas drawn from others. Quotations must preserve the speaker’s meaning and be attributed accurately. Reproducing material requires attention to permission, licence conditions and any applicable legal exception; a credit alone does not establish a right to use it.

Our volunteer contributors may write under their own names, work collaboratively or agree to a ghostwriting or background role. We discuss credit before publication. Collective work may carry the Evolving Humanities credit, and we remain responsible for what we publish. Planned contributor biographies and photographs will be added with permission.

Fair treatment and personal dignity

People described in a story should be represented with enough context to understand their words and actions. Serious allegations or criticism may require a meaningful opportunity to respond before publication, taking account of urgency, safety and the public interest. If a response is not available, the article should say so where relevant.

We take particular care with private individuals, children and people sharing distressing experiences. Contributors should raise questions about consent, identification and sensitive details with the editor. Contact forms are not a secure channel for confidential sources.

Independence and conflicts of interest

Contributors should disclose personal, professional or financial relationships that could affect a story or reasonably concern a reader. An editor should decide whether disclosure, a different assignment or another safeguard is needed.

Donors and partners do not purchase editorial conclusions or guaranteed publication. Relevant sponsorship and commercial relationships should be identifiable to the reader. Organizational support and editorial judgment need clear boundaries.

Photographs, illustrations and audience claims

Captions should identify photographs and illustrations accurately. Images made or materially altered with generative tools should be described as illustrations or otherwise labelled so readers are not led to mistake them for a documentary photograph. Image rights and attribution must be considered separately from the accuracy of the article.

Reviews may discuss a still, cover or other image from the work under review. Such images remain their rights holders’ property; any use must have an appropriate basis and context. Rights holders can contact us about a particular image.

Claims about audience reception should identify the source. Informal comments, self-selected polls and audience ratings should not be presented as representative research. Where we publish a numerical result, we should explain the source and relevant sample or limitations.

Technology and human responsibility

Tools may help with transcription, translation, research organization or drafting. Their output is not itself a verified source. A person responsible for the article must check factual claims, quotations, citations and rights, and must not pass invented material off as reporting.

A material use of automation should be explained when readers need that information to understand how the work was produced. Confidential source material and unnecessary personal data should not be placed in external tools. Tools do not take responsibility for an article; the people publishing it do.

Review, corrections and reader questions

Before publication, a contribution should be reviewed for its evidence, structure, attribution and treatment of the people concerned. The depth of review depends on the subject and its risks, and we should be honest about the limits of what has been established.

If something is wrong, our corrections process explains how readers can raise it and how material changes should be recorded. These standards will be reviewed as the team develops and our publishing practice changes.