Snapshots and releases

The Observatory publishes selected sources and analyses after editorial review. Source pages identify the original publication, the recorded review date and any limits of the check. A library update date indicates when records were updated; it does not mean that every source was checked again.

A snapshot is a fixed version of one module's coded table at a stated legal snapshot date. Snapshots are immutable: a correction produces a new snapshot that supersedes the old one, and both remain addressable by date.

A snapshot is published only after the companion manuscript has been submitted, as a dated release with a DOI. Until then it may exist in the repository as draft or review and is shown with a banner.

Every coded cell must cite source records at Research Stage Verified or above and Evidence Level 1–4. The build refuses a snapshot that cites a Signal record or a media, LinkedIn or blog source. The robustness audit published with a snapshot is a same-coder rule-based recoding — a sensitivity check, not inter-coder reliability — until a second human coder exists.