# Independent Research Review

Use this playbook for authorized review of a manuscript, protocol, preprint, proposal, study package, or CATAIL workspace.

## Authorization gate

Before inspecting unpublished material, confirm authorization, target venue or owner policy, confidentiality and AI/tool rules, conflicts, competence limits, retention/deletion plan, and allowed processing boundary. Default to local-only handling. If authorization is unclear, do not inspect or quote the content.

## Review order

1. Create a neutral map of question, system/population, design, unit, comparator, outcomes, principal claims, and available materials.
2. Identify missing material without inferring its contents.
3. Trace central claims to methods, results, figures/tables, analyses, citations, and evidence IDs.
4. Review question-design alignment, sampling/allocation, controls, masking, unit of inference, exclusions, missingness, multiplicity, assumptions, uncertainty, harms, and generalizability.
5. Review reproducibility: protocol revision, code/data access, environment, run manifests, analysis registry, seeds, and deviations.
6. Review ethics, privacy, safety, conflicts, authorship, disclosure, and reporting-guideline coverage within your competence.
7. Write findings that point to exact claim, study, run, analysis, evidence, figure, or manuscript locations and request a bounded corrective action.

Separate fatal validity threats, major issues, minor issues, and optional suggestions. Do not manufacture an editorial decision, score scientific merit automatically, or equate checklist completeness with validity.

The accountable human reviewer must verify every factual statement and submit through the authorized channel.