RMP.4:4 - Solution

Name the receiving examination, preserve its consequential material before loss, connect the records to actual choices and results, and state what the receiving reader can and cannot inspect. Keep original material, supported reconstruction and irrecoverable loss distinct throughout.

RMP.4:4.1 - Name the examination and choose the entry

State what someone is trying to examine. They may need to understand an exclusion, test whether a comparison was actually made, inspect an interpretation’s grounding, or recover the inputs behind a reported computation. Identify the bounded question, design and material at issue.

A final claim is not a prerequisite. During preparation, the examination can concern whether the planned comparison was carried out or whether the forthcoming analysis has the material it needs. Preserve that intended use without inventing a result or ClaimCandidate. When a result is later supplied, connect its actual uses to the retained material.

Choose the entry that fits the work:

• Planned or ongoing work: recover the question/design and operational choices; identify what would be lost unless captured now; arrange and maintain the actual records.
• Existing or inherited work: begin with the receiving question, claimed result if any, and surviving original records. Recover the design, protocol and conduct only as far as those records support them.

RMP.1–RMP.3 can supply missing question, design or operational decisions. Direct entry is appropriate when compatible inputs already exist. In a legacy inquiry, uncertainty about an earlier design is part of the account, not permission to attribute a newly written protocol to earlier researchers.

Bound the package by the examination. Name which study portion, source set, encounters, specimens or computation it covers and the relevant period or version. If the receiving use changes, reconsider whether the preserved material is sufficient for that new use.

RMP.4:4.2 - Preserve the smallest material whose loss would matter

Ask what the critic would be unable to distinguish if one record disappeared. Start with those distinctions. Examples include which specimen was measured, which document was inspected, why a source was excluded, or whether an outcome was already visible when a choice was made.

Arrange capture at the point where the relevant event or choice occurs. An existing qualified laboratory or data practice may already do this. Reference its records and qualifications rather than reproduce them in an RMP form.

Preserve the applicable plans with their versions and timing. A registration, protocol and analysis intention may have different contents and dates. Keep enough to compare intention with conduct, including amendments. A record’s title cannot establish its prospective status.

Distinguish these evidential situations in ordinary language:

Retain the distinction even if all four occur in the same notebook or account. Date a reconstruction as a reconstruction. A polished description of earlier intentions does not establish that those intentions preceded data access.

Actual retention, access and authorized destruction requirements come from their owners. Preserve permitted evidence of loss and its consequences where possible; do not retain prohibited material merely to improve a trace.

RMP.4:4.3 - Connect actual conduct, transformations and uses

Trace one consequential result or planned comparison back to its material. Identify the actual observation, source, encounter or computation and the selection or transformation between it and the receiving use.

For observations, retain the specimen, case, participant, site or sample identity at the permitted precision, together with the conditions needed to interpret it. Keep raw indications, qualified measurement results and derived values distinguishable. FPF C.16 supplies measurement discipline; a spreadsheet cell alone does not establish its unit, uncertainty or qualification.

For sources, distinguish a catalogue description from a document actually inspected. Preserve source and edition, locator, dating and provenance, the selection reason and any relevant transcription or translation. Keep contrary material and unexamined source families visible where they affect the question.

For transformations, retain the input–operation–output connection at the granularity the examination needs. Identify consequential filtering, recoding, deduplication, aggregation, translation, manual correction and model or computational steps. Preserve the actual version and parameters when they can change the result. FPF A.10 supplies the general claim-bound evidence/provenance discipline; this pattern makes the inquiry’s actual research-use connections recoverable.

For computation, a useful trace can connect input versions, code and environment dependencies, parameters or seeds where relevant, the particular run and its outputs. Include relevant failures and manual interventions. An executable script plus a data folder does not by itself identify the run behind a displayed result.

For qualitative work, retain the grounding material and the researcher’s consequential interpretations and changes under the selected approach. Researcher positioning or a change in questioning may be essential evidence; a universal coding-agreement score may not be appropriate.

For evidence synthesis, preserve searches as performed: sources or platforms, dates, query versions and resulting material, followed by screening, duplicate handling, exclusions and extraction changes. This supports examination of how the corpus was obtained. It does not perform appraisal or synthesis merely by recording their intended Methods.

In a mixed inquiry, preserve each component’s trace and the actual combining or interpretive choices. Expose shared data and assumptions. Two streams of records do not establish independent corroboration if both depend on the same selected participants or retrospective source.

RMP.4:4.4 - Explain consequential changes and contributions

Preserve the earlier intention and actual change wherever their difference matters. State what changed, when, why, who made the consequential choice, which material it affects and what relevant data or results were available by then. Record uncertainty instead of filling an unknown reason with a plausible one.

Distinguish events with different consequences. A missed observation, excluded case, failed run, inaccessible source and revised interpretation are not interchangeable “cleaning.” A record can be intact yet excluded from a particular analysis; an observation can be absent because the event was missed rather than because its value was extreme.

If a choice was made after relevant outcomes were seen, retain that timing. Such a choice may still be justified for the actual Method and use, but cannot supply an advance commitment. A later sensitivity analysis or independent criticism is separately performed work, not a retrospective repair of the original timing.

Identify substantial human and tool contributions. For AI-assisted work, preserve what is needed to inspect the research-shaping contribution:

• the model or service identity available to the user, version or configuration when known, and timing;
• the relevant input context and output actually used, subject to the applicable protection and access conditions; and
• the responsible person’s checks, acceptance, rejection or revision and the effect on the research work.

Exact prompt content belongs in the retained trace when it can change the examined research choice. Routine spelling or editorial assistance need not generate a transcript archive. An unavailable internal model state remains unavailable; do not invent it to make a service appear replayable.

If an AI output proposes a source that does not exist, preserve its rejection where that matters to the account and use the actual checked source as evidence. The rejected output is not a source in the scientific chain.

RMP.4:4.5 - Determine actual access and the consequences of loss

Confirm what material survives and how the receiving reader can inspect it. A repository link, an access policy and a custodian’s assurance answer different questions. A public summary may omit the exact detail required for a criticism even though an authorized reader could inspect the retained original.

Apply the following distinctions to the named examination, not as a universal grading scale.

A qualified custodian’s inspection result, when available, retains its own scope and limits. It is neither equivalent to public access nor a compulsory substitute in every study. An access request cannot itself establish that access has been obtained.

RMP.4:4.6 - Return the trace with a truthful receiving scope

Present the shortest account that lets the receiving reader locate the needed material and understand the action-changing connections and limits. It should recover:

• the question, design, intended examination and study portion covered;
• the surviving plans and the basis for claims about actual conduct;
• the material used, consequential selection and transformations;
• changes, their timing and human or tool contributions; and
• actual access, reconstruction, loss and the examinations each permits or prevents.

The same records can carry several of these meanings. A package with linked governed records need not duplicate them. Use stable identities or versions where a later change would otherwise make the account ambiguous.

Demonstrate one actual path through the account. Start from a displayed value, interpretive excerpt or planned comparison and locate its sources and choices. If the path ends at a missing record or unavailable access, state that endpoint and its consequence rather than filling it with a general assertion of transparency.

Return a limited package when it is the truthful useful result. For example: “The downstream measurements and handling decisions can be inspected; the intended paired thaw-event comparison cannot.” The package is useful because it makes the boundary actionable, not because it turns every receiving question into an answerable one.