OSI and ET: originating source of information and evidence traceability

Abstract

Originating Source of Information (OSI) is the idea of following all data, facts, and citations that documents rely on for their arguments back their source. OSI then helps people perform Evidence Traceability (ET), which allows them to understand the questions about the different sources used in documents such as how many unique sources were used, where the sources came from, when the sources were obtained, and how the sources were obtained. Answering these questions allows people to better question the validity of documents, reevaluate hypotheses, or continue work or research when original authors are not available.