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External Research Standard

The principles for how Devonshire Digital treats external research and evidence — when it is required, how much confidence to place in it, and how to avoid overclaiming from it — are set out in docs/company/research-and-evidence-principles.md, which is canonical. This standard restates that document as the source of principle and adds a concrete, checkable rule for how to cite external research when it is used anywhere in this repository.

Citation format

When a document relies on an external source — a study, an article, a competitor's published claim, a statistic, a piece of documentation — cite it with the following elements:

  1. Source name — the publisher, author, or organization responsible for the source (e.g., "Nielsen Norman Group," "U.S. Census Bureau," "[Competitor] product documentation").
  2. URL — a direct link to the source, if it exists online. If the source is not available online (e.g., a private report), say so explicitly instead of providing a broken or approximate link.
  3. Access or publication date — the date the source was published, and/or the date it was accessed, since web content can change or disappear after citation. Use YYYY-MM-DD format for consistency with this repository's other date fields.
  4. Scope — what the source actually covers (e.g., "survey of 400 US households in 2023," not implied to be universal or current if it isn't).
  5. Limitations — any known limitation of the source relevant to how it's being used here (e.g., small sample size, self-reported data, potential conflict of interest if the source is produced by an interested party, methodology not published).
  6. Confidence level — a brief statement of how much weight this source should carry (e.g., "high confidence — peer-reviewed, large sample," "low confidence — single anecdotal source, included for directional context only").

Example

Source: Statista, "Smartphone users in the United States 2018–2028." URL: https://example.com/statista-source (illustrative — replace with the real link when citing). Accessed 2026-07-10. Scope: US-only smartphone user estimates and projections, does not cover tablet-only households. Limitations: figures beyond 2026 are Statista's own projections, not measured data. Confidence: medium — reputable aggregator, but projection years should not be treated as fact.

Where citations belong

Citations live inline in the document that relies on the claim, close to where the claim is made, not collected only in a separate bibliography the reader has to cross-reference. A short inline citation (source name + date + link) is sufficient in most cases; use the full format above where the claim is load-bearing for a commercial or product decision.

Uncited claims

A claim presented as externally verified fact without a citation in this format should be treated as unverified and either cited properly, removed, or explicitly reframed as an internal assumption or opinion.

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