How a paper earns
its footnotes.
Eight rules govern everything published here. They are not aspirations — a draft that fails any one of them does not leave the desk, however interesting its conclusion.
- 01
The question comes before the method
No paper begins with an available dataset. It begins with a question the desk cannot already answer, written down in one sentence. If the sentence needs a semicolon, the question is still two questions and the work is not ready to start.
- 02
Primary sources, or say so
Gazettes, court records, Hansards, filings, transcripts, and interviews conducted by the desk rank first. Secondary literature is used to situate an argument, never to establish a fact. Where a claim rests on a single source, the paper says which one and why it was trusted.
- 03
Iterative adversarial inquiry — the Whetstone method
Every argument is deliberately attacked before publication. A counter-position is written in good faith, at full strength, by someone tasked with defeating the draft. The paper is revised until the counter-position is either answered on the record or conceded in the text. Blades sharpen on stone, not on cloth.
- 04
Statistics are audited, not inherited
Any number that arrives already famous is traced to its origin before it is repeated. If the trail dies in a press release, a rounded slide, or a citation loop, the number is marked a ghost statistic and reported as such — including when it favours our own argument.
- 05
Interviews are consented, coded and kept
Qualitative work uses semi-structured interviews with informed consent, thematic coding, and grounded-theory iteration. Sample size, recruitment route and refusal rate are disclosed. Transcripts are retained; identities are protected where subjects asked for it.
- 06
Limitations are printed, not buried
Each paper carries a limitations section written before the conclusion, not after peer feedback forces it. Where the design cannot support a causal claim, the paper makes a correlational one and says so plainly.
- 07
Open access by default
Preprints go to SSRN, peer-reviewed work to open journals, and everything is linked from this catalogue. No paywall, no institutional login. If it is worth publishing, it is worth publishing where anyone can read it.
- 08
Corrections are permanent record
Errors are corrected in place with a dated note at the foot of the paper. Nothing is silently edited. A substantive correction is announced with the same weight as the original claim.
Who paid, who read it first
The desk is self-funded through studio work. Where a paper touches a client, a venture, or a body that has commissioned us, the relationship is declared on the paper's first page. No paper has been submitted for pre-publication approval by a funder, and none ever will be.
Send the counter-argument
The Whetstone method does not stop at publication. If you can break a finding — a mis-sourced figure, a sample that cannot bear the claim, a literature we missed — write to hello@extrafemi.com. Substantive challenges are published alongside the paper.
Read the standards in practice across the catalogue or meet the desk on the about page.