Ijcit publishes for senior IT decision-makers in healthcare and finance — sectors where the cost of getting something wrong is measured in patient outcomes or settlement risk. Our methodology exists so that readers can verify, challenge, and act on what we publish with appropriate confidence.

Research approach

Every briefing begins with primary sources. For regulatory coverage that means reading the legislation, the implementing technical standards, and any regulator guidance. For vendor coverage it means the vendor’s technical documentation, not the marketing pages. For research coverage it means the underlying paper, not the press release.

We supplement primary sources with on-the-record conversations with practitioners working inside the organisations we cover — CIOs, CISOs, heads of architecture, programme leads. Practitioner perspective shapes the briefing’s framing; it does not substitute for verifiable sources.

We do not republish vendor announcements. We do not aggregate other publications without independent verification. We do not write briefings from sponsored briefings or analyst summaries alone.

Source standards

• Primary over secondary. When the source is a regulation, we read the regulation. When it is a vendor capability, we read the vendor’s technical documentation, not an analyst summary.
• Public over private. Where possible, we link readers directly to publicly verifiable sources. Confidential information from named sources is rare and clearly attributed.
• Recent over evergreen. When citing regulatory frameworks, vendor capabilities, or technical standards, we check the date of the source and note material changes since publication.
• Specific over general. Where a claim depends on a specific clause, version, or technical detail, we cite the clause, version, or section number — not the document as a whole.
• Cited inside the briefing. Source links appear inline where a reader needs them, not buried in a footnote. The Sources block at the foot of a briefing is the complete list.

Review before publication

Every briefing is reviewed by a second editor before publication. The review covers four dimensions:

• Factual accuracy. Are the claims in the briefing supported by the sources cited?
• Source quality. Are the cited sources primary and recent? Are there better sources we should have used?
• Regulatory interpretation. Where the briefing interprets a regulation, is the interpretation defensible and consistent with regulator guidance?
• Editorial voice. Is the briefing institutionally neutral, free of marketing language, and appropriately specific?

For Healthcare IT and Finance IT material that depends on specialist regulatory interpretation, we ask a subject-matter expert outside the editorial team to read the draft. Subject-matter reviewers are credited at the foot of the briefing when they consent to be named, and uncredited (but listed in our internal records) when they prefer to remain anonymous.

Conflicts of interest

Editors and contributors disclose any commercial, advisory, or equity relationship with organisations covered in a briefing. The disclosure process runs at three levels:

• Reassignment. Where a meaningful current or recent (within 24 months) commercial relationship exists, the briefing is reassigned to a different editor.
• Inline disclosure. Smaller relationships (former employment, public-record advisory roles, conference appearances) are disclosed in the byline area.
• Annual register. All editors and regular contributors maintain a publicly available register of current outside roles, advisory positions, and equity holdings.

AI use in editorial

See our no-AI-generated-copy pledge for the full policy. In short: no AI-generated draft text appears in any briefing. We use AI tools for transcription, citation lookup, and grammar checking only, and every such use is reviewed by a human editor before publication.

Sponsorship and editorial

See our sponsorship policy. Sponsorship sits in clearly marked banners and the weekly newsletter sponsor slot. It does not influence what we publish. Sponsors do not see briefings before publication and have no editorial input.

Corrections

When we find material errors, we mark them publicly at the foot of the briefing and explain what changed. See our corrections policy for the full process, including how to report an error you have spotted.

Standards we benchmark against

The standards above are informed by the IPSO Editors’ Code of Practice (UK), the IFCN Code of Principles, the SPJ Code of Ethics, and the editorial standards published by Reuters, the Financial Times, and the BBC. We do not claim full compliance with any single external code; we describe what we actually do.

Contact

Questions about a specific briefing’s methodology should go to the named editor. General methodology questions, complaints, and challenges to our standards go to [email protected]. We respond to substantive enquiries within five working days.