Information Provenance
The traceable origin and history of a claim.
Industry Term
Full explanation
Information provenance is the traceable origin and history of a piece of information: where a claim came from, and what sources support it.
It is a chain, not a single point: a statistic's provenance includes not just who first published it, but who has cited it since, whether later citations trace back accurately to the original, and whether the claim has drifted or been distorted as it spread from source to source.
A claim with clear, traceable provenance is more resilient specifically because a system, or a skeptical reader, can verify it by following the chain back to its origin. A claim with no traceable origin, repeated widely but sourced nowhere, is easier to discount and more likely to be quietly dropped when a system is choosing what to cite confidently.
Why this matters
Claims that can be traced to an origin survive scrutiny. Claims that circulate without a source are the ones that get dropped or distorted.
Example
A statistic that traces cleanly back to a named, dated original study, with each subsequent citation crediting that study accurately, has strong information provenance. The same number, repeated for years with the original source lost and no one quite sure where it first came from, is far easier for a careful system, or a careful reader, to discount.
Where this sits
Information Provenance belongs to Retrieval, Evidence & Consensus, one of the seven layers of the Aingworth Glossary. Information exists, then it is retrieved, then sources are selected, then they corroborate one another, then consensus emerges. This is where Aingworth's Consensus Over Rankings thesis lives.
Related terms
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