Editorial
How these reviews are made
Last updated .
Geitoq reads the research behind one claim at a time. These are the rules each piece is held to, so you can tell what the studies found from what I'm arguing.
Reading the source, not the summary
I read the study itself, including the methods and the limitations, before I cite it for a finding. When I could only read an abstract, or could not open the source at all, the piece says so in the source list, and I cite it only for what a named secondary source says about it. A news story is cited for what happened. What a study found is cited to the study.
Grading the evidence
Each review sets out the main studies in a table: the design, who was studied and where, and what was found. I look at whether people were randomly assigned, how large and how specific the sample was, whether the outcome was measured or self-reported, how long afterwards it was measured, and, where the paper reports it, who paid for the work. Where a study reports an effect size or an interval, I give it, and I do not round a modest or uncertain result into a confident one. Preprints are labelled as not peer reviewed. Claims from a company about its own product are labelled as the company's.
Words I will not stretch
I use causal verbs, such as "improves", "raises" and "causes", only when the design can support them. Otherwise it is "was associated with" or "was higher in". Activity is not learning: a completion rate, a login count or a satisfaction score says something about use and nothing directly about what anyone learned. Where a claim depends on that gap, I say so.
How I search
Each piece includes a short method note: where I searched, with which terms, on what date, and what I left out and why. The search starts from the claim's origin and the claimant's own references, uses open research indexes such as Crossref, OpenAlex and Europe PMC, and follows citations where it can. The method note says exactly what was and was not searched. If a study that matters was missed, that is a correction.
Citation checks
Before a piece publishes, a script opens every linked source and checks that it loads. It resolves every DOI on Crossref and compares the title and year with what I cited. It checks each paper's retraction status on OpenAlex. It also searches the source text for every passage I quote, word for word. The results are printed at the foot of the piece with the date. These checks show a source exists and says what is quoted. They do not show the source is right, and the grading above is the part that tries to do that.
My read versus the record
When a sentence is my reading and not a reported finding, it says so. Every number, name, date and quotation is checked against the source it cites before a piece goes up. A second model that did not write the draft reads it against a written rubric, and I read it last.
Corrections
If something is wrong, write to [email protected]. A correction goes at the foot of the piece with its date and what changed, and is logged on the corrections page. I don't edit a mistake out quietly. No piece has needed a correction so far.
Independence and disclosure
Geitoq is my own project. Nothing on it is sponsored, and it is not client work. I build websites and web strategy for a living at thisismyurl.com, and I use and write about WordPress learning plugins elsewhere. Where a piece touches something I have built, sold, used or been paid by, the byline note says so.