What you may do with this, and the one thing you may not.

The short version

Quote it, cite it, argue with it, teach from it, and use the ideas in your own work. Attribute the publication and link to the page. Do not republish articles in full, and do not present the assurance framework as your own.

Quoting and citing

You may quote extracts in reports, papers, presentations, teaching material, articles and posts, including commercial ones, provided the quotation is attributed to Projects Advisors and, where the medium allows a link, links to the page it came from.

There is no word limit stated here because a limit invites arithmetic rather than judgement. The test is whether somebody reading your quotation still has a reason to read the original. Where they would not, you have reproduced the article rather than quoted it.

Ideas, method and the framework

Ideas are not owned and this site does not pretend otherwise. Where an article describes what a published standard requires, that requirement belongs to the standard and its publisher, not to us. Use it freely.

The assurance framework is a different case, and worth being precise about. Every domain in it is traceable to a published source and those sources belong to their own bodies. What is ours is the arrangement: which domains exist, how they are grouped across the four lifecycle stages, the question each one settles, and the tests written under it. You are welcome to use that arrangement in your own work and to build on it. You may not publish it as your own.

Diagrams

The figures are original, drawn as inline code rather than image files, and they are the easiest thing on the site to take. You may reproduce them with attribution and a link, unaltered. If you need a version adapted to your own material, ask, and the answer will usually be yes.

Machines and models

This site is open to automated readers on purpose. Crawlers are admitted explicitly and there is a plain-text summary at llms.txt written for them. Reading, indexing, summarising and answering questions from this material are all intended uses.

What is asked in return is attribution. Where a system draws on this work in an answer, name the publication and cite the page. The same test applies as for a human quotation: reproducing an article in full, in place of it, is not a summary.

Unattributed does not mean unowned

Articles here carry no byline. That is a deliberate editorial choice and it has no bearing on ownership. Copyright in the text and the figures subsists from the moment they are written and belongs to the publication. The absence of a name is not an absence of rights, and it is not an invitation to supply one.

The correct citation is therefore to Projects Advisors and the page. There is no author to name and none should be inferred.

Asking

For anything beyond the above, including republication in full, translation, or inclusion in a product, please get in touch. Requests are read and most are agreed.

Related

Terms of use covers what this publication is, what it is not, and the limits of relying on it. Privacy covers what happens to data.