Sources & Methodology

What counts as a primary source

• The standard-setting body's own published document, for an ISO or other management-system standard
• The scheme owner's own published rules, for a certification scheme that is not an ISO standard
• An accreditation body's own official register, for whether a body is currently accredited and what it covers
• The government's own legal text or official register, for a country-level permit, registration, fee or other legal obligation

How a record is classified

Every record that carries a legal or regulatory weight is classified two ways, independently, because the two questions are different. The first is how binding it is: a precondition of carrying out the activity at all; a scheme that law has made compulsory; something compulsory only within a defined list of activities or products; a binding duty that produces no permit or certificate at all — a registration fee or compulsory insurance, for instance; a voluntary programme specific to one country; or a voluntary programme that is not tied to any one country.

The second question, asked separately, is what the duty concretely is: a permit, a registration, a fee, insurance, a reporting obligation, a product requirement, or a certification. A compulsory insurance requirement and a compulsory registration can share the same answer to the first question — both are binding duties with no certificate at the end — while differing completely on the second. Collapsing the two into one label would lose that distinction, so this library keeps them apart.

Jurisdiction, including sub-jurisdiction

A record's jurisdiction is a country, or a bloc, and — where its source scopes it more narrowly — a named subdivision of that country. A rule that a source states applies only to England, or only to a particular US state, is recorded with that subdivision named. A record with no subdivision stated is a record whose source describes the rule as applying to the whole country; that is a specific claim, not a default assumption filled in where the narrower scope was simply not looked up.

What the accreditation-body registry states mean

Each accreditation body's page links to that body's own public register — the tool a reader uses to confirm a certification body is genuinely accredited. That link is shown in one of four states, and only one of them is ever shown as a clickable link:

• Live — the register was opened and its content confirmed working, on the date shown
• Not yet confirmed — the body publishes a register, but an automated check could not confirm its content; it is not shown as a link until a manual check confirms it
• Not working — an address existed but did not respond when tested, and no working replacement has been found yet
• No register found — no public register could be located from the sources checked, which does not mean the body has none, only that this library has not found one

What is held back, and why

A record's presence in this library is itself a claim: that its facts were checked against a primary source. Where that check could not be completed — an ambiguous source, a scheme whose accreditation model could not be confirmed, a body whose registry status could not be established — the record is held out of the library rather than published with the gap filled by a guess. This is the same rule stated from the publishing side on the Editorial & Verification Policy page.