Editorial Policy

This policy explains how SoftwareMarketplace.Net commissions, writes, edits, fact-checks, and reviews every article we publish. It is the operational definition of what we mean when we say our coverage is independent and trustworthy.

Authors and authority

Every article is assigned to a named author with a public profile page, a verifiable professional background, listed certifications, and disclosed expertise. We do not publish anonymous content. We do not put a human byline on AI-generated articles. Our editorial team uses AI tools — like every modern publisher — for research support, transcription, and outline drafting, but every word published under an author's name is written, reviewed, and stood behind by that author.

Sourcing and fact-checking

Articles on SoftwareMarketplace.Net are grounded in primary sources: official documentation, vendor reference architectures, peer-reviewed research, industry standards (NIST, ISO, CIS), regulatory texts, and our authors' own hands-on testing. We link to primary sources directly. When we cite a third-party study, we link to the underlying paper, not a summary of it.

Technical claims are verified against the current version of the relevant product or specification. When a product or standard is updated, we update affected articles and add an explicit "updated" date.

Reviews and recommendations

Software reviews are based on hands-on testing against realistic workloads. We document our testing methodology in the review itself. Recommendations are conditional — we tell you which kind of team should choose which tool and why. We do not publish "best of" lists that consist of every product in a category in alphabetical order.

Editorial independence

No advertiser, sponsor, or affiliate partner has any influence over what we cover, how we review a product, or which recommendations we make. Editorial decisions are made by editors based on what is useful to readers. Commercial arrangements are managed by a separate team and disclosed on the page where they apply.

Corrections and updates

If we get something wrong, we correct it. Significant factual corrections are noted at the bottom of the affected article along with the date and a brief description of what changed. See our corrections policy for the full process.

Use of AI

We use AI tools transparently. AI may be used for research assistance, transcription of interviews, code linting, image generation for non-editorial decoration, and as a writing-aid for outlines. AI is never the author of a published article. AI-generated text is not published under a human byline.

What we will not publish

We do not publish thin content, rewritten competitor articles, programmatic SEO pages, doorway pages, or content created solely to rank in search engines. We do not publish content because a keyword has search volume. We publish because we believe an article will materially help the practitioners we serve.