SourceScope Methodology
Last updated: June 11, 2026
SourceScope estimates Source Health from the visible sourcing on a Wikipedia article: citation structure, local ratings, source diversity, metadata, archive/link metadata, and article maintenance signals. It is designed to help users inspect sources faster, not to replace human judgment.
What Source Health measures
- Citation coverage: how much of the article appears connected to citations and whether citation-needed or maintenance signals appear.
- Local ratings: whether sources match local records, source categories, institutional patterns, identifiers, or caution flags.
- Source diversity: whether the article relies on a narrow set of domains or a broader set of source types.
- Link and archive metadata: whether links appear accessible, archived, recoverable, or provider-only.
- Metadata quality: whether references include useful titles, dates, identifiers, publication fields, or archive information.
What SourceScope does not claim
SourceScope does not determine factual truth, political bias, scholarly consensus, or whether a source proves a specific claim. Context Match is an experimental inspection aid that highlights nearby citation context, shared terms, and caution signals. It does not prove source support.
Source leads
Best Source Leads are ranked from visible references and metadata. SourceScope favors useful research signals such as stronger source types, cleaner metadata, accessible links, archive availability, identifiers, and nearby citation context. A source lead is a suggested place to inspect first, not an endorsement.
Local dataset and heuristics
SourceScope includes bundled local ratings data and conservative source-category heuristics. The dataset is limited and incomplete by design, so unknown sources are treated as unknown rather than automatically good or bad.
Archive and metadata checks
User-triggered tools may check public metadata, archive, or page sources such as Internet Archive, Crossref, PubMed, arXiv, and Wikipedia. These checks are used to improve source inspection, archive recovery, and Reference Integrity workflows.
Privacy posture
Saved reports, source leads, projects, and Source Packs are stored locally in the browser. SourceScope does not require an account for free scanning. Paid access is handled through ExtensionPay and Stripe.