Readers trust a magazine when they know how it makes decisions. These are the standards that govern everything Savant publishes.
Independence
Our editor decides what we publish. We choose pieces for what they add to the reader’s understanding. No contributor, sponsor or partner can buy a favorable mention, a link, or the right to review a piece before it is published.
Every piece is edited
Nothing appears on Savant without an editor reading it first. Editing here means checking the argument as well as the prose: whether the reasoning holds, whether the evidence supports it, and whether a reader without the writer’s background can follow it. Writers see and approve substantial changes before publication.
Accuracy and sources
Our writers are responsible for the accuracy of what they write, and our editors check it. We expect facts, figures and quotations to come from sources the writer can name, and we link to those sources where it helps the reader. We prefer primary sources: the study rather than the article about the study, the filing rather than the summary of it.
Where something is uncertain or disputed, we say so. Where a finding is well known but not well established, we try not to present it as settled.
Opinion and analysis
Much of what we publish argues a point of view. Those views belong to the writer. We publish them because they are well reasoned and worth considering, not because the magazine endorses them. We try to make the difference between fact, analysis and opinion clear in every piece.
Conflicts of interest
Contributors must disclose any financial or professional interest in the subject of their piece: a company they own or advise, a product they are paid to promote, an investment that would gain from what they argue. Where an interest is relevant to the reader, we disclose it in the piece. Where an interest would compromise the piece, we do not publish it.
Savant and the people behind it may themselves have business interests in some of the fields we cover. We do not let those interests decide what we publish, and we disclose them where they bear on a particular piece.
Pen names
Some of our writers publish under a pen name. Their work meets the same standards as everything else we publish, and pen names never exempt anyone from our disclosure rules. Our Pen Names Policy explains how this works.
Sponsored content
From time to time we publish pieces paid for by a sponsor. Every sponsored piece is labeled Sponsored at the top, where a reader sees it before reading. Sponsored pieces go through the same editorial review as everything else, and we turn down sponsored pieces that would not meet our standards. Links in sponsored pieces are marked as sponsored for search engines.
Our editorial pieces are never paid for, and contributors to our expert network neither pay nor are paid to be published.
Links
We link to other sites when it helps the reader: to a source, to a fuller explanation, to work we admire. Every link in every piece is approved by an editor. We do not sell links, and we remove links that serve a commercial purpose rather than the reader.
Use of AI
Writers and editors at Savant may use AI tools for research, documentation and polishing, as they might use any other tool. What we publish must be the writer’s own thinking: their ideas, their judgment and their experience. AI is never a source. Every fact and figure is checked against its original source by a person, and every piece is read and approved by a human editor before it appears.
Corrections
When we get something wrong, we correct it. Corrections of fact are made in the piece itself, with a note at the end saying what was changed and when. We do not quietly rewrite published work to hide an error.
If you believe something we published is inaccurate, write to [email protected] with the page and the correction. We read every message and reply when we make a change.
Questions
If you have a question about these standards or about anything we have published, write to [email protected].