Research Standards
How Applied Futures Research decides what to claim, how it labels what it claims, and how it corrects itself.
Every claim says how much weight it can bear
Each substantive statement in a paper carries one of four tags, so a reader never has to guess whether a sentence is evidence, inference or declared imagination.
- GROUNDED
- A documented fact or reported datum, linked to a public source. It can be cited.
- ANALYTIC
- An inference drawn from grounded facts and established practice. It should be tested against the reader’s own situation.
- PROJECTION
- A forward estimate with a stated mechanism. The paper names the indicators that would confirm or refute it.
- SPECULATIVE
- A possibility worth naming that is not yet in evidence. It should be held loosely.
Exploratory papers in the sciences use a maturity scale suited to their subject, from established or demonstrated results through laboratory and theoretical work to declared speculation. The principle is the same: the label travels with the claim.
Scenarios, not point forecasts
Where a paper reaches a judgment about the future, it sets out three scenarios, the conditions that define each, and the signals that would show which one is arriving. Where likelihoods are given, they are stated as the author’s judgment, not as model output.
What the evidence is
Papers are independent syntheses of the published literature, primary documents and public data, with sources cited throughout. Vendor and trade material is used for what it documents, not for its marketing claims. Survey data is identified as self-reported and read as directional. Papers are not peer-reviewed in the academic sense; the tagging exists so that any reader can audit a claim directly against its source.
Permanent numbers
Every paper carries a permanent number in the form AFR 26-NN, the year followed by the paper’s place in that year’s series. A number is never reused or reassigned. Papers issued before November 2026 also keep the register number they were first published under, and citations to that number remain valid. The full list is under Publications.
Nussbaum, Kevin. “Deliverability, Not Capacity.” 2nd ed. AFR 26-12. Applied Futures Research, Z-Space Dynamics, October 2026. https://zspacedynamics.com/papers/deliverability-not-capacity
The record is kept, not rewritten
A paper revised substantively, because events have moved or the analysis has, is issued as a new edition under the same number. The new edition says what changed and scores the earlier one against what actually happened. Earlier editions remain online unchanged, so the record can be checked.
Errors of fact are corrected in the paper, and the correction is noted on the paper’s page with its date. A correction that changes a conclusion is issued as a new edition. Corrections can be sent to research@zspacedynamics.com.
Who pays for the research
Published research is funded by Z-Space Dynamics. It is not sponsored, and no party with an interest in a paper’s conclusions commissions, funds or reviews it before publication. If a published paper ever draws on commissioned work, or on a contribution from an interested party, the paper says so.
Commissioned work is confidential and kept separate from the published research. The terms are set out under Engagements.
Free to read, share and cite
Every published paper is free to read, share and cite with attribution. Paid instruments built from the research, such as the Robotics Buyer’s Field Kit, are sold separately. Nothing published here is investment, legal, tax or engineering advice.