Research Standards

Last updated: July 6, 2026

Paid submissions are held to working-historian standards. Reviewers (the pledgers) and moderators evaluate against these criteria, so treat them as the rubric.

Sourcing

• Every substantive claim carries a citation: archives, parish/civil registries, newspapers, auction records, museum files, exhibition catalogues, city directories, census records, or comparable primary/secondary sources.
• Cite precisely (repository, collection, document, date, page) so claims are checkable.
• Distinguish clearly between documented fact, reasonable inference (and the reasoning), and open questions. Negative results — archives searched without result — are valuable and citable work.

Originality

• Plagiarism — including uncredited copying from existing databases, Wikipedia, or other researchers' published work — results in removal, payout reversal, and a ban.
• Building on published scholarship is fine and expected; credit it and add something.

Attribution opinions

You may report evidence bearing on attribution, but the Service does not certify authenticity, and paid research here is not an authentication service. Frame attribution conclusions as scholarly opinion with the supporting evidence.

Collaboration

The public discussion thread on each artist page is the coordination space. If several researchers contribute materially to one submission, declare the split up front — the platform pays collaborators directly per the declared shares.