Editorial standards

Factual accuracy

Every factual claim in a profile — a role, a date, an institution, a qualification, an award — must be traceable to a source the desk has seen. Where a claim rests solely on the subject’s own account, it is attributed to them rather than stated as established fact.

Where a fact cannot be established, it is omitted. A profile with a gap in it is more useful to a reader than one that fills the gap with an assumption.

Sourcing

Profiles are compiled from two kinds of material:

• Material supplied by the subject: biographical detail, career history, qualifications and the professional links a subject asks us to carry.
• Public professional records: firm and institutional biographies, professional registry entries, regulatory filings, published work and reported coverage.

Quotations are used only where the desk holds a record of the subject having said the words attributed to them, in an interview conducted for the publication or in a source we can point to. The publication does not compose, paraphrase or approximate a quotation.

Editorial review

Profiles and features are reviewed by the editor before publication. Review covers factual sourcing, the fairness of the characterisation, and whether the piece does what its format claims to do.

Not yet established: a second-reader stage for profiles of people in regulated professions, and a written sign-off record retained per piece. Both are intended; neither is in operation, and this page will be updated when they are.

Subject review

Subjects are given the opportunity to check the factual content of a profile before it is published. That check covers accuracy only. Subjects do not have approval over the editorial judgement in a piece, over its framing, or over what is included and left out.

Corrections

When something published here is wrong, the correct position is to fix it plainly and say so. Corrections are made on the page itself, and a corrected profile or feature carries the date it was revised.

To ask for a correction, write to corrections@roleandrecord.com setting out what is wrong and, where possible, what the correct position is. The desk aims to respond to every correction request, and to act on a substantiated one promptly.

Not yet established: a published corrections log listing every revision made across the publication, and a stated response time. Both are intended.

Withdrawal

A subject may ask for their profile to be withdrawn. The desk considers such requests on their merits and will act on one where the subject’s circumstances warrant it. A withdrawn profile is removed rather than edited into silence.

Contributors

Profiles and features carry a named byline, and every contributor has a page listing what they cover and what they have written. Contributors do not write about people or organisations they have a financial or personal interest in; where any relationship exists that a reader might reasonably want to know about, it is disclosed on the piece.

Editorial and commercial material

The publication does not currently carry sponsored, partner or commercially placed material of any kind. Inclusion is an editorial decision and is not available for purchase.

Should that ever change, sponsored material will be labelled as such at the top of the piece, will not carry an editorial byline, and will be excluded from the profile directory. This paragraph exists so the position is on the record in advance.

Questions

Questions about these standards can be sent to editorial@roleandrecord.com, or see the contact page for the full list of desks.