Every fact has a source

Accuracy comes from the process, not from one person checking everything. Readers can always see where a statement comes from and how certain it is.

Source tiers

A number or a date needs a Tier A source, or two independent Tier B sources. Tier C never supports a fact on its own.

A · Authoritative

Peer-reviewed papers, universities, government agencies and standards bodies (ISO, Codex, FAO), national coffee research institutes for their own research, the International Coffee Organization and national coffee institutes for statistics and official manuals. Standards set by trade bodies such as the SCA count here for what the standard itself requires. Patents count here only for how a machine is built. May support any fact alone.

B · Trade and expert

Trade and professional associations (beyond their own standards), recognised textbooks and handbooks, theses, conference proceedings without stated peer review, established importers and roasters. Context alone; numbers and dates only when two independent B sources agree.

C · General

Magazines, blogs, forums, Wikipedia, marketing pages, AI-generated summaries. A lead to find a better source; never cited as the only source.

Verification pass

Before an entry is marked source-checked, a separate pass matches every fact to the sentence or table cell in its source that supports it, and stores that quote. Facts without a supporting quote are corrected, downgraded or removed. Where credible sources disagree, both positions are shown and marked as contested.

When an entry says that no study or source consulted for this entry shows something, it means the sources listed in that entry. It does not claim that no such evidence exists elsewhere. Each entry shows when its literature was last searched, and asks readers to suggest newer or missing work. A literature watch searches each entry again for new reviews and major studies, and moves that date forward.

A quote can exist in a source and still be used out of context: the authors may be citing someone else, testing a hypothesis they reject, or reporting one cultivar under one set of conditions. The checking pass therefore records, for each quoted passage, whose claim it is and the conditions it holds for. Entries show this under the source.

Context audit

The checks above look at every statement, but the same process can miss the same kind of mistake again and again. So we also measure it. A random sample of cited statements from source-checked entries goes to a pass that did not write or check them. It reads each source around the cited passage and judges whether the statement keeps the source’s meaning. Every statement found wanting is corrected, and the result is published here.

What these checks cannot catch

• Newer work. An entry is faithful to the sources it lists. A major study published after its literature was last searched can be missing until the next search or a reader’s suggestion.
• Our own calculations. Where an entry does its own arithmetic from cited values, it says so (“our calculation”). These steps have no source to check against, so the checking pass recalculates them and states the assumptions, such as pH, basis or units.
• Differences between entries. Two entries can cite different good sources for the same quantity. Where sources differ, entries name each source and point to each other.
• Expert judgement. Source-checked is not the same as expert-reviewed. Only entries marked expert-reviewed have been read by a named specialist.

AI in our process

We use AI tools throughout our work: to find and read sources, to draft and revise text and figures, and above all to check. Each entry passes through steps that are kept apart:

• Drafting – every statement must come from a source that has been read, with a supporting quote stored next to it.
• Independent source check – a separate pass, which did not write the entry, matches each statement to the sentence or table in its source and corrects, softens or removes what the source does not support.
• Automatic quote check – a script without AI compares every stored quote with the text of its source, so a quote that is not in the source is caught.
• Rules set by people – people decide which sources count and how much weight each can carry, and review everything the checks flag.

AI can make mistakes. This process is built to catch them, and every correction is listed in the entry’s change log. If you find something we missed, please use Suggest a change.

Entry status

• Source-checked – the source check is complete: every statement has been matched to its source by a checking pass that is separate from the writing, and quotes are compared with the source text automatically. Writing and checking are assisted by AI; mistakes are still possible, and we correct them when they are found.
• Expert-reviewed – additionally read and signed off by a named member of the expert panel.
• Unverified material is not published.

Suggestions and changes

Coffee knowledge keeps moving, and informed people can read the same evidence differently. Every entry has a Suggest a change button. Each suggestion is checked against our sources and these rules. Suggestions about health, safety or a legal limit are looked at first.

A suggestion leads to a change when the evidence meets the source rules above. A statement that stronger sources contradict is updated. Where credible sources disagree, both positions are added to the entry as contested. Broken links and sources that do not support a statement are fixed. Opinions and style preferences are noted but do not change the text. Missing topics go on the list of future entries.

Every change is listed on the entry under Change log, with its date, what changed and why.

Licence

Text on Coffearium is licensed CC BY 4.0. Every entry is also available as structured data (JSON) for researchers and tools.

Every entry and the tools that check them are also archived as open data on Zenodo, with a permanent DOI for citation: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23641507 (always the latest version). The tools are published at github.com/Rumanici/coffearium-open.