Methodology
How we index a paper
A short, honest account of how entries in this index are chosen, checked and written — and what you can rely on.
Selection
The index favours papers with demonstrable significance: work that founded or redirected a field, introduced a method now in wide use, or reported a landmark result. We aim for breadth across disciplines rather than completeness within any one of them. Inclusion is editorial and is not a ranking — a paper’s absence means only that we have not added it yet.
Verification
Before a record is published, its bibliographic details — title, authors, year, venue and identifier — are checked against the publisher of record or an authoritative index (the DOI resolver, PubMed/PubMed Central, NASA ADS, PNAS, the journal’s own pages, or the relevant preprint server). Where a persistent identifier exists, we record the DOI; where one does not — as with some pre-DOI-era papers — we link to the most authoritative stable copy available.
Summaries and key findings
Each summary is written for this index in plain language. It is an original restatement of what the paper set out to do and what it found — not a copy of the source abstract. We try to preserve the precision of the original (its numbers, its caveats) while making it readable. Summaries describe the paper as published; they do not adjudicate later debates, replications or corrections unless that is the point being made.
Links and access
Every record links to the original via “Read the original paper”, resolving through the DOI wherever possible so the link survives site moves. When a freely readable copy exists — an open-access version, a repository deposit or a publisher’s free full text — we add it and label the record open access. We do not host paper PDFs.
Corrections
We will correct any factual error in a record promptly. If a summary misstates a finding, or a citation is wrong, please write to papers@status.lu and we will fix it.
Copyright and independence
Copyright in each paper remains with its authors and publishers; the rights to the summaries and editorial records are ours. Status Papers is published independently by status.lu and is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the authors, journals or institutions whose work it indexes.