dissertation-document-quality-gate

name	dissertation-document-quality-gate
description	Review formal research outputs before delivery, including proposal drafts, ethics/compliance materials, Word documents, source notes, reports, manuscripts, and stakeholder-facing summaries, using success criteria, evidence checks, formatting/render checks, and unresolved-field reporting.

Research Document Quality Gate

Use this skill before delivering or finalising formal research documents, especially Word files, proposal sections, ethics/compliance materials, participant-facing documents, supervisor/PI/client/reviewer summaries, source registers, reports, manuscripts, and literature review drafts.

Purpose

Adapt eval-harness, verification-loop, and checkpoint practices to research-project work. Define success criteria, inspect the output against them, fix issues, then report remaining risks.

Gate Levels

Use the lightest gate that fits the risk.

Level	Use When	Required Checks
Light	chat answer, small note, quick summary	answer matches request, no obvious invented facts, open questions marked
Standard	project wiki, Obsidian note, source register, planning document	source paths present, evidence boundary clear, links/files exist, no raw sensitive data
Formal	proposal, ethics form, participant-facing material, manuscript, report, grant, supervisor/PI/client/reviewer-facing Word/PDF	source-first gate passed, facts verified, citations checked, project delivery review completed, formatting/render checked, TO CONFIRM fields listed

Success Criteria

Before checking, state or infer:

• intended audience
• purpose of the document
• required format
• source files used
• must-have sections
• facts that must be exact
• risks to avoid

Required Checks

Evidence

• confirmed facts have source paths or URLs
• interpretations are labelled
• citations are verified enough for the claim
• contextual sources are not treated as empirical evidence
• no fabricated participant, supervisor, institutional, or personal details

Research Logic

• research focus is visible
• gap/problem statement is connected to the selected project profile and evidence base
• methodology or workflow matches current project stage
• expected contribution does not overclaim beyond what the evidence and method can support
• for major planning or revision outputs, the section rationale matrix, revision matrix, or logic-transfer audit exists when needed

Requirement / Delivery Readiness

For formal, supervisor-facing, or submission-facing outputs:

• apply quality-gates/PROJECT_DELIVERY_REVIEW_GATE.md before delivery
• apply university-guidance/RUBRIC_EVIDENCE_GATE.md before any assessed academic grade-band or marking-criteria judgement
• apply university-guidance/DISTINCTION_DELIVERY_REVIEW_GATE.md only when assessed academic high-band readiness is relevant
• state the requirement evidence level: official original text, local summary, inference from local summary, or evidence insufficient
• produce an indicative readiness statement rather than an official mark, acceptance decision, funding decision, approval, or client sign-off
• revise feasible weaknesses before delivery, then re-check the revised version
• do not call a document submission/client-ready while required ethics, compliance, source, format, word-count, appendix, AI declaration, or referencing details remain unresolved

Language And Style

• use uk-academic-writing-style for proposal, literature review, methodology, supervisor/PI/client/reviewer-facing, or academic prose when relevant
• use style-memory-and-revision-gate for major chat answers, revised documents, and supervisor-facing summaries
• recommendation or section purpose appears before extended reasoning
• British English is used where appropriate, unless preserving source titles, template wording, or citation metadata
• generic AI-style phrasing is removed without weakening evidence boundaries
• for generated Markdown-to-Word outputs, scan the source Markdown or extracted document text for the user's prohibited style patterns before rendering or delivery
• if a bilingual or Chinese explanation section is included, check the Chinese text as seriously as the English academic prose

Ethics And Privacy

• no raw participant data in general notes
• participant-facing documents avoid unnecessary personal disclosure
• recruitment, consent, withdrawal, data retention, and AI-use claims are source-grounded
• teacher evaluation, surveillance, and student-data risks are bounded

Word / Formatting

For important .docx outputs:

• check project-specific format requirements when they exist
• follow current official project, journal, funder, client, university, or institutional requirements over generic public formatting guidance when they conflict
• preserve original file unless overwrite is requested
• generate a clearly named revised file
• when a Markdown source is rendered to Word, run scripts/markdown_docx_structure_check.py or rely on scripts/formal_delivery_guard.py with the Markdown source so tables and structural features are not silently flattened
• run scripts/docx_layout_review_check.py for important Word outputs, and pass --previous-docx when revising a previously accepted Word document
• render to PDF/PNG when possible
• inspect key pages for broken numbering, clipped text, awkward page breaks, and formatting errors
• record a layout self-review verdict; unresolved table loss, heading flattening, or unexplained regression is delivery-blocking unless the user explicitly accepts an override risk
• use TMPDIR=/private/tmp for document rendering on macOS

Visible Output QA

For Word/PDF, figure, diagram, browser, Obsidian, GitHub, or other user-visible deliverables, use research-wiki/VISIBLE_OUTPUT_QA_PROTOCOL.md.

Record:

• artifact;
• communication job;
• rendered output or preview path;
• deterministic checks;
• visual inspection;
• baseline/regression check;
• unresolved risks;
• delivery verdict.

When local tools are available, validate the note:

python3 scripts/visible_output_qa_check.py <qa-note.md>

A Visible Output QA pass only proves that the visible surface was checked. It does not prove citation support, compliance readiness, academic/professional quality, or submission readiness.

Artifact Completeness

For important proposal, chapter, manuscript, report, stakeholder-facing, or revision-package outputs, check whether the task needs:

• source map,
• working or confirmed motivation,
• motivation thread model,
• section blueprint,
• section rationale matrix,
• revision matrix,
• logic-transfer audit,
• citation/source status,
• TO CONFIRM list,
• Word/render check.

Use ../dissertation-argument-spine/references/paperspine-adapted-writing-controls.md for the adapted PaperSpine completeness table. Missing artifacts are acceptable for small tasks only when the final report explains why they were not needed.

Verification Loop

1. Check against success criteria.
2. Fix concrete issues.
3. Re-check only the affected areas.
4. Record residual risks and TO CONFIRM.

Do not keep polishing if the document already satisfies the task and remaining changes are taste-level.

Final Report Shape

For document work, final answer must state:

• what changed
• why it changed
• new file path
• verification performed
• project delivery review evidence level and post-revision readiness status
• what still needs user confirmation

Use concise Chinese unless the document itself is in English.