Cosmos Unveiled exists to report modern astronomy and cosmology with the same rigor the science itself demands. This page describes the editorial rules every article is expected to satisfy before it leaves our desk — and the practices that make those rules enforceable in day-to-day reporting.
These standards are deliberately conservative. Our readers trust us because every number, every name, and every claim on this site can be traced to a primary source.
A claim is only as strong as its source. We accept these as primary:
- Peer-reviewed journals. Nature, Science, The Astrophysical Journal, Nature Astronomy, Nature Geoscience, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Astronomy & Astrophysics, and comparable venues. Preprints on arXiv are acceptable when the paper is clearly labeled as submitted to a named peer-reviewed journal.
- Institutional press releases and mission pages. NASA, ESA, ESO, STScI, JPL, JAXA, ISRO, NAOJ, Gemini Observatory, NOIRLab. These are appropriate when the information originates with the institution itself (e.g., a mission status update, a spacecraft discovery announcement).
- University news offices. Acceptable when reporting specifically on research published by that institution, and when the release links to the underlying paper.
- The Conversation and similar researcher-authored secondary outlets. Acceptable as secondary, not primary.
We do not cite as primary sources:
- Wikipedia. Useful as an index to find primary sources — never as the source itself.
- YouTube videos or transcripts.
- Social-media posts of any kind, including those from scientists.
- Other science blogs or aggregators.
- AI-generated summaries, regardless of which model produced them.
Before an article is published, every specific claim in it is re-checked against its primary source. That means:
- Every number — distances, masses, temperatures, rotation rates, percentages, dates — is traced back to the peer-reviewed paper or institutional release it came from. If the number cannot be verified, it does not appear in the article.
- Every name of a researcher, instrument, or mission is spelled as in the source and, where appropriate, linked to it.
- Every quotation is verified against the original paper or press release. We do not invent quotes or paraphrase them into quotation marks.
- Every journal citation includes the publication, volume, and year so any reader can find the paper.
Concrete example: in preparing our article on the Pleiades, five specific numbers taken from the original source material did not match the peer-reviewed literature. All five were corrected against the primary sources before publication. This is the standard, not an exception.
Some categories of content are off-limits, regardless of traffic potential:
- Speculation disguised as fact. When the science is contested, we say so. When there are competing theories, we name them. When something is not yet known, we do not pretend otherwise.
- Unsourced numbers. If a figure in our draft cannot be traced to a peer-reviewed paper or institutional release, it is either replaced or cut.
- Hype language. Words like groundbreaking, revolutionary, and game-changing are absent from our published articles. We show, not tell.
- AI-only reporting. Large language models are used editorially as tools for drafting, research, and verification, but no article is published without an editorial pass that confirms every claim against a primary source.
- Undisclosed commercial content. We do not run sponsored articles, native advertising, or affiliate content masquerading as reporting.
Every article closes with a Sources section listing the papers and releases that informed the reporting, with direct links where available. A reader who is unsure about a specific claim can go directly to its primary source.
We disclose our editorial process openly. This page is one such disclosure; the Corrections Policy is another. Our Masthead describes who publishes Cosmos Unveiled. For any question about a specific article or claim, the editorial desk is reachable at hello@cosmosunveiled.com.
Science moves. When a new paper, mission result, or dataset materially changes what we previously reported, we update the affected article — visibly, with a timestamp and a note explaining what was changed and why. Substantive errors are handled under our Corrections Policy.
Stylistic edits (typos, link fixes, minor clarifications that do not alter meaning) may be made silently.