Editorial Standards & Citation Policy | 学术与文献引用标准

How this institute selects, verifies, attributes and corrects published content · Last reviewed: 2026-10-30

1. Scope of the Standard

These standards govern everything published under the institute’s name: reference articles, equipment parameter pages, patent case studies, regional analyses and data compilations.

They do not govern material that is clearly labelled as opinion, or external material reached by link. Where we quote a third party, that party’s own standards apply to their work; ours apply to how we present it.

2. Source Hierarchy

Sources are not treated as equal. Where two sources conflict, the higher tier prevails unless the lower one is more recent and expressly supersedes it.

Tier	Source Type	Examples & Treatment
1	Primary legal & regulatory	Patent specifications, national hazardous waste catalogues, EU regulations and directives, customs tariffs, national standards. Quoted by instrument number and date of the version in force.
2	Peer-reviewed & proceedings literature	TMS Light Metals proceedings, journals, conference papers. Cited by author, title, venue and year; DOI included where one exists.
3	Official statistics	USGS mineral commodity data, national customs datasets, IAI and European Aluminium association datasets. Cited to the reporting body and dataset year — never as a bare number.
4	Corporate & institutional disclosure	Manufacturer datasheets, audited annual reports, certification audit reports (e.g. ASI). Used with the origin stated: manufacturer data means the manufacturer’s own claim, not independent verification.
5	Trade & general media	Used to identify developments, not to establish technical parameters. Never the sole basis for a figure.

3. Citation Rules by Source Type

3.1 Patents

Patents are the backbone of the historical and technical sections. Every patent reference carries:

• Publication number with country prefix (e.g. US 4,842,255)
• Applicant / assignee of record, and current assignee where the two differ
• Filing date and publication date — both, because they answer different questions
• Inventor names where available
• Classification codes where they help identify the technical field

Three additional rules apply:

• Machine-translated claims are never quoted as original text. They are used for comprehension only. Quotations come from the original-language text or are paraphrased.
• Legal status is stated with the date it was checked. Status changes; an entry without a check date is not treated as current.
• We do not state freedom to operate. An expired patent family may remain in force in other jurisdictions. This site states facts about filings. It is not legal advice, and no page should be read as a legal opinion.

3.2 Chemical & Thermodynamic Data

• Reaction equations are written in full, with stoichiometry, not described in prose.
• Every thermodynamic or quantitative value carries a system boundary: per tonne of what, relative to what baseline, at what temperature, over what period.
• Where a value is widely cited but inconsistently defined — as with aluminium carbon intensity — both the figure and its boundary are given, and comparisons across different boundaries are flagged rather than presented as equivalent.

3.3 Recovery & Performance Percentages

This is the most common source of error in the field, so the rule is strict:

Likewise, in-house drain and secondary recovery are different metrics measured at different points in the chain. They are never combined into a single “recovery rate”.

3.4 Trade & Customs Data

• HS codes are cited with the commodity description, because codes are revised and descriptions fix the meaning.
• The Harmonized System is administered by the World Customs Organization (WCO); it is not a WTO instrument, and we do not attribute it to one.
• Volumes are cited to the reporting customs authority and period. Single-year figures are treated as ranges, not point values, where sources differ.

3.5 Named Companies & Individuals

• No equipment rankings, awards or commercial endorsements. Companies appear because their technology, patent or disclosed data is relevant to the technical point.
• Manufacturers and third-party processors are distinguished by role. Conflating a press manufacturer with a dross recycler is an error, and we do not repeat it.
• Biographies are factual and chronological. No individual is ranked, rated or honoured by this institute.

4. Verification Status

Every factual claim on this site falls into one of five states. Pages state which applies inline, or in a status block where the mix is complex.

Status	Meaning
Traced	Attributable to a patent registry, peer-reviewed paper, association dataset, official regulation or named installation. The strongest state we claim.
Source-dependent	The underlying figure is revised on a published schedule or reported differently by different bodies. Given as an approximate value with the variance noted.
Installation-specific	Varies by plant, feed composition or operating practice. Given as a range with the source noted; not transferable to another site without measurement.
Self-reported	Originates from a company or individual statement without independent confirmation — for example a claimed patent count. Flagged inline.
Unverified	Cannot be traced to a primary source. Marked inline rather than presented as established. Where such a claim is widely repeated, we say so and say why we cannot confirm it.

Only the applicable states are used on any given page; their absence does not imply a claim is unverified.

5. Corrections & Revisions

We are wrong sometimes. The process is fixed:

Error Class	Handling
Factual / numerical	Corrected in place. A dated correction note is appended to the page stating what changed and why. The original value is not silently deleted.
Attribution	Corrected and noted. If a claim was wrongly sourced, the note names the correct source.
Omission of a material qualification	Treated as an error of substance, not of style — for example a recovery figure published without its denominator.
Typographical / formatting	Fixed without a note.

• Corrections are never silent. A reader who saw the earlier version must be able to see that it changed.
• Submissions are welcome. Technical corrections, literature additions and data challenges should be sent to the research board with the source attached. Substantiated corrections are credited unless the submitter asks otherwise.
• We do not remove content because it is commercially inconvenient to a company, sponsor or reader. Removal happens for inaccuracy, not for discomfort.

6. Content Lifecycle

How material enters, ages and leaves the site:

• Evergreen reference pages carry a Last reviewed date and are updated when the underlying source changes — not on a fixed schedule, because sources change on their own.
• Regulatory values — CBAM default values, free allocation factors, certificate prices, hazardous waste codes — are stated as at the review date, with the change mechanism noted.
• Dated items go to the news archive with publication dates. When such material proves durable, it is promoted to an evergreen page rather than left to age in a news column.
• Superseded content is retired, not deleted. Where a page describes a superseded standard, it is marked as historical with the date of supersession.

7. Language & Presentation

• English is the primary language. Page language is declared as English; Chinese blocks are marked lang="zh-CN" so that assistive technology reads them correctly.
• Chinese content is a service to readers already on the page, not a parallel publication. It is not a translation of record; where the two differ, the English governs.
• Units are stated explicitly. Tonnes, metric tons and short tons are not treated as interchangeable. Temperatures carry °C. Compositions state whether the basis is weight or molar.
• No unstated conversions. Where a source figure is converted — Gt to Mt, imperial to metric — the conversion is shown.

8. Limits of What We Publish

Stating these limits is part of the standard, not an apology for it:

• No legal opinions. We state what regulations say and what filings contain. We do not advise on compliance obligations, freedom to operate, or contractual risk.
• No commercial recommendations. We do not recommend a supplier, a procurement decision or an investment.
• No safety instruction. Operating procedures, exposure limits and emergency response are matters for the operator’s own risk assessment and the applicable regulator. Where a hazard is described — ammonia release from AlN hydrolysis, for example — it is described as a property of the material, not as handling guidance.
• No estimates presented as measurements. Where a figure is modelled or extrapolated, it is labelled as such.

9. Related Pages

• About the Institute — mission, operational boundaries and research methodology
• Resources & Data — maintained reference tables for HS codes and hazardous waste classifications
• Patents & Pioneers — retrieval method and citation standard in practice

Submit a Correction

Technical corrections, literature additions and data challenges: research@aluminiumrecycling.org. Please include the page URL, the statement in question, and the primary source you rely on. Substantiated corrections are published with credit unless you ask otherwise.

This page is itself subject to these standards. Revisions are recorded below.

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中文摘要 · 学术与文献引用标准

本页存在的目的：让读者无需先信任我们即可核查我们的工作。它载明我们采用何种来源、如何标注、拒绝陈述什么，以及错误如何处理。本站每篇文章均依此规则撰写；若出现偏离，会在页面上标注。

1. 适用范围。涵盖本机构名义下发行的全部内容：参考长文、装备参数页、专利案例、区域分析与数据汇编。不适用于明确标注为观点的内容，以及经链接抵达的外部材料。

2. 来源分级（冲突时高层级优先，除非低层级更新且明确取代）。第一层 一手法律与法规（专利说明书、国家危废名录、欧盟法规指令、海关税则、国家标准），按文件编号与现行版本日期引用；第二层 同行评审与会议文献（TMS《Light Metals》等），按作者、题名、会议与年份引用，有 DOI 则附；第三层 官方统计（USGS、国家海关数据集、IAI 与欧洲铝协数据集），注明发布机构与数据集年份，绝不作为裸数字引用；第四层 企业与机构披露（厂商数据表、经审计年报、ASI 等认证审核报告），须标明出处性质——”厂商数据”指厂商自身主张，非独立核实；第五层 行业与大众媒体，仅用于识别动态，不得作为技术参数的唯一依据。

3. 分类引用规则。专利须载明公开号（含国别前缀）、申请人/著录权利人（二者不同时并列）、申请日与公开日（两者回答的问题不同）、发明人、分类号；机翻权利要求绝不作原文引用，仅助理解；法律状态须随附核查日期；不出具自由实施意见——保护期届满的同族可能在他国仍有效。化学与热力学数据须写全反应式与化学计量，不用散文描述；每个数值必须附系统边界（每吨什么、相对何基准、何种温度、何期间）。回收率与性能百分比：必须载明分母——相对金属铝投入、相对总渣量，还是具名装置在既定条件下？未载明基准的百分比一律视为未证实，无论别处重复多少次；厂内沥铝率与二次回收率是链条不同环节的两个指标，绝不合并为单一”回收率”。贸易与海关数据须连同商品描述引用编码（编码会修订，描述才固定含义）；协调制度由世界海关组织（WCO）管理，非 WTO 文件，不作归因；体积数字注明海关机构与期间，来源不一时按区间处理。具名企业与个人：不设排名、奖项或商业背书；装备制造商与第三方处理商按角色区分，不得混称；人物志为事实性编年记录，本机构不作任何排名或荣誉授予。

4. 核验状态分五级：可追溯（可归因于专利数据库、同行评审论文、协会数据集、官方法规或具名装置，为本机构主张的最强状态）、随源变动（底层数据按公布日程修订或不同机构口径不一，给出近似值并注明差异）、装置特定（随工厂、入料成分或操作实践变化，给出区间并注明来源，未实测不得套用于他处）、自述（源自企业或个人陈述、无独立佐证，如某项专利计数，随文标注）、未证实（无法追溯一手来源，随文标注而非作为既成结论呈现；若该说法流传甚广，我们会说明其流传情况并说明为何无法核实）。各页仅使用适用的状态，未列出某项不意味着该主张未证实。

5. 更正与修订。事实/数值类：就地更正并附载明日期的更正说明，说明改动内容与原因，原值不静默删除。归属类：更正并说明，若来源被误植，说明中列明正确来源。遗漏实质性限定：视为实质错误而非文风问题，如回收率未载明分母。排版/格式类：直接修正，不附说明。三条通则：更正绝不静默——看过旧版的读者必须能看到它变了；欢迎提交，技术更正、文献补充与数据质疑请附来源，经证实的更正予以署名（除非提交者不愿署名）；不因内容在商业上令某公司、资助方或读者不便而删除——删除只因不准确，不因令人不适。

6. 内容生命周期。常青参考页附”最近复核”日期，在底层来源变更时更新（不设固定周期，因为来源按自己的日程变动）；法规数值（CBAM 默认值、免费配额系数、证书价格、危废代码）按复核日期的状态陈述，并说明其变动机制；时讯入新闻档案并附发布日期，经久耐用的材料升级为常青页，而非留在会显得过期的栏目里；被取代的内容退役而非删除，标注为历史版本并注明取代日期。

7. 语言与呈现。英文为主，页面语言声明为英文，中文块标注 lang=”zh-CN” 以使辅助技术正确朗读；中文内容服务于已在站内的读者，非平行出版物，亦非翻译定本——两者不一致时以英文为准。单位明确书写：公吨、长吨、短吨不可互换，温度带 °C，成分须说明是质量基准还是摩尔基准；未加说明的换算不出现，来源数字被换算时（Gt→Mt、英制→公制）须显示换算过程。

8. 不发布的内容。不出具法律意见（我们陈述法规说什么、申请文件载有什么，不就合规义务、自由实施或合同风险提供建议）；不作商业推荐（不推荐供应商、采购决策或投资）；不作安全操作指导（规程、暴露限值与应急处置属运营方风险评估与主管机构范畴；描述危害——如 AlN 水解释放氨——是描述物料属性，非操作指引）；不把估算当作实测呈现（建模或外推的数值须明确标注）。

提交更正：research@aluminiumrecycling.org。请附页面 URL、相关陈述及所依据的一手来源。经证实的更正予以署名发布，除非您另有要求。本页同样受本标准约束，修订记录随附。