find-primary-sources

name	find-primary-sources
category	school
description	Locate the original records, data, research, law, specifications, or firsthand material behind a claim. Use when summaries, citations, or search results need to be checked against direct evidence.

find-primary-sources

Trace claims toward the evidence-producing event. A source can be authoritative yet still be secondary to the claim being checked.

When to use

• Use for quoted research, statistics, policy claims, technical behavior, historical events, or contested reporting.
• Treat datasets, methods, standards, official records, transcripts, artifacts, and contemporary documents as different primary-source types.
• Use current official material for rules or specifications that may have changed.

Procedure

1. Copy the exact claim, its current citation, date, and context into a trace log.
2. Identify what event or process could have produced direct evidence for that claim.
3. Follow references backward through links, footnotes, bibliographies, identifiers, archives, and dataset documentation.
4. Search by distinctive phrases, author, title, organization, date, DOI, report number, statute, standard, or dataset identifier.
5. Prefer the stable publisher, repository, court, regulator, standards body, archive, or research venue over mirrors.
6. Confirm identity using title, authorship, version, date, pagination, and retraction or correction status.
7. Read the relevant primary material in context, including methods, definitions, limitations, tables, and appendices.
8. Record a durable locator, access date, quoted or paraphrased support, and whether the source actually entails the claim.

Failure plan

• If the original is inaccessible, label the evidence indirect and preserve the best trace available.
• Do not call a press release primary evidence for results that originate in an underlying study.
• If versions disagree, identify which version governed at the relevant time.
• Do not infer support from a title, abstract, search snippet, or citation alone.

Done

• The trace ends at the strongest accessible direct evidence or clearly documents why it cannot
• Source identity, version, context, and claim-level support are verified
• Any remaining dependence on summaries or inaccessible material is explicit