Integrity//How we work
Scientific integrity
The standards this practice holds itself to when it publishes and advises, written down so you can check the work, and check us against them.
Why // This page
Standards worth writing down
Most of what Ekodama publishes appears outside peer review, and says so plainly: the articles, the catalogue references, the reports. Working outside the journals does not lower the bar; it removes the referee. The discipline has to come from the practice itself.
This page states that discipline. Each commitment names the mechanism behind it, so a sceptical reader can see how the work is made and where to press on it.
None of it is exceptional. It is the ordinary deontology of science, carried into consulting work: name your sources, state your limits, correct your errors. That holds for everything published under the Ekodama name.
Commitments//Five
What we hold ourselves to
01/05
Source everything
Claims of fact rest on named sources: peer-reviewed studies where they exist; public research, institutional reports, and open datasets where those are the best available. A reader should never have to take a number on trust.
In practice
- Articles cite numbered, DOI-linked references, so a claim can be followed to the publisher's version of record.
- Catalogue titles trace every number and equation to the paper it came from.
02/05
Say what we don't know
Honest work separates what the data shows from what it implies. Uncertainty is stated, not smoothed over; where the evidence is thin or contested, the text says so.
In practice
- Detection limits, error budgets, and model assumptions are treated as subject matter. Several of our articles exist to work through them.
- Published references state their limits alongside their results.
03/05
Stay independent
Clients pay for the analysis, not the answer. We hold no stake in the credits or projects we assess, and no fee of ours depends on how a result comes out. If an interest could colour a conclusion, we disclose it.
In practice
- No carbon credits are sold, brokered, or marketed by this practice.
- We do sell reference publications; they are openly priced in the catalogue, and no engagement depends on buying them. No vendor sponsors this practice.
04/05
Verify before publishing
References are checked against the published record, including whether a cited paper has since been corrected or retracted. Where that checking has reached so far is spelled out below.
In practice
- Cited DOIs are resolved against their Crossref records, correction and retraction notices included.
- We are building a claim-by-claim evidence ledger, article by article, comparing each sentence against its source text.
05/05
Correct in the open
Substantive errors get fixed in place once found, then logged with the date and what changed: wrong numbers, wrong citations, claims that overreach. Typos are just fixed; anything that could have misled a reader gets a line in the record.
In practice
- The corrections log lists each substantive fix with its date, the affected article, and what changed.
- Anyone can flag a suspected error; the log ends with the address for exactly that.
Method//Verification
How verification works
The chain a published reference passes through, from citation to standing record.
- 01/04
Cite at the source
Every reference carries an identifier, a DOI wherever one exists, pointing at the publisher's version of record rather than a summary of it.
- 02/04
Check the record
Each DOI is resolved against its Crossref record, including the update notices that flag corrections, errata, and retractions. A citation to a retracted paper is a defect; this step is where it gets caught.
- 03/04
Trace the claim
Claims are compared, sentence by sentence, against the text of their sources and given a verdict: supported, or source unavailable. Where we could not obtain a source, the claim says so rather than getting the benefit of the doubt.
- 04/04
Version and revise
Catalogue references carry dated editions and are revised as the literature moves, so you always know which version you are citing and when it last changed.
Where this stands
Sourced citations and versioned editions are standing practice. The registry check and the claim ledger are newer: one article has been through them in full so far.
Adopted August 2026, extended article by article. This note is updated as coverage grows.
Transparency//AI
What AI touches, and what it does not
This chapter covers everything published under the Ekodama name: this website, the insight articles, the catalogue references. It also covers how we use AI tools inside client engagements. First written in August 2026, and reviewed at least once a year.
The legal frame is Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, the EU AI Act, whose transparency obligations (Article 50) have applied since 2 August 2026. Those rules exempt AI-assisted text that a person with relevant expertise has substantively reviewed, under named editorial responsibility. Everything Ekodama publishes goes through that review, so none of it legally needs an AI label. We disclose anyway, because how the work is made is part of what you are assessing.
Used for
- Literature and source searches, alongside the usual scholarly databases.
- Help with structuring and drafting articles, reports, and site copy.
- Analysis support: writing code, checking data handling, stress-testing calculations.
- Translating the site into the languages we do not write natively.
- Generating some cover illustrations. They carry an AI label wherever they appear.
- Building and maintaining this website.
Never used for
- Publishing without review. A person reads every text before it goes out.
- Scientific judgment. Method choices, interpretations, and recommendations in client work are the founder's own.
- Passing generated images off as field photography. The field photographs on this site were taken in the field; the generated illustrations carry a label.
- Training models on client material. Nothing a client sends us feeds a model.
Review // Responsibility
A person answers for every page
Dr. Thomas Fungenzi reads every Ekodama text before it goes out: the substance of the claims, the numbers, and the references, which he traces back to their original sources. Editorial responsibility for everything under the Ekodama name is his.
That review is what the Article 50 exemption rests on. The editorial note at the foot of each article goes beyond it: an article that used AI somewhere along the way says so on its own page, instead of leaving it to the small print here.
Checking is a practice, not a guarantee. Errors still slip through, and we correct them once we find them, then log them in the corrections record below.
Client work // Confidentiality
Client data and independence
Client documents and data stay under the confidentiality terms of each engagement. AI tools touch client material only where an engagement's terms allow it, and then under settings that exclude use for model training. Identifying or sensitive material goes in only with the client's explicit agreement; otherwise it stays out, and the work uses anonymised or non-identifying excerpts instead. Where confidentiality and convenience pull against each other, confidentiality wins.
Ekodama has no sponsorship, affiliation, or commercial relationship with any AI vendor. We pay for the tools like any other instrument, and no vendor had a word in this statement. AI changes how a draft comes together. It does not change whose judgment you are buying.
Last reviewed
August 2026
Reviewed at least once a year, and whenever our practices or the law change materially.
Corrections//The record
What we got wrong
Substantive errors in published work are corrected in place and recorded here, dated, newest first. The bar for an entry: anything that could have misled a careful reader.
2026-08-04
Correction
Representative of What? When a New Sample Falls Outside Your Model’s DomainThe interactive domain explorer scaled its dissimilarity index by the wrong denominator, so every value read about three times too large, and the verdict shown beside it came from a different test than its label implied. Both were corrected, along with three passages that promised more than the article delivered.
Spotted something?
If a number, a citation, or a claim looks wrong, say so. Reports go to the founder and get checked against the source; where the reader is right, the fix lands here.
Write to contact@ekodama.proWork with us
Hold us to it
Every engagement runs under the standards on this page, and the scientific judgment behind it stays with the founder. If that is what your project needs, the conversation starts here.