Sources: the pool, the flow and the scores

This file is the progressive-disclosure pool: the flow from hits to sources, then each source with its quality. Searches: protocol; terms in frame.

Flow

Stage Formal Grey
Returned by the strings 6,485 not recorded (Q/A 318)
Screened 422 377
Included as new 41 23
Carried from linked reviews 6 1
In the review 47 24
  • Formal:
    • 6,485 records were returned: Semantic Scholar 6,374 and arXiv 111. The two unusable "outliner" counts (F13) are left out.
    • 422 were screened by title (382 Semantic Scholar, 40 arXiv), with repeats across strings. The protocol's rule, the 15 most cited per string, would give 392 on Semantic Scholar; the 10 not screened are not recorded.
    • 41 were included as new: 23 from the strings, 11 from leads named in the brief and checked, 4 by backward snowballing, 3 by handoff from information-typing.
    • Excluded, by title, rounded to tens: repeats across strings 40; off topic (medicine, physics, images, maps, biology) 260.
    • Also excluded: systems or techniques with no reader study 60; model pipelines not about reading a document tree 40.
  • Grey:
    • The web strings showed 45 links and the producer visits 14 pages; the Q/A strings returned 318 threads. Engine totals were not recorded.
    • 377 were screened (27 for G1, 18 for G2, 14 visits, 318 threads).
    • 23 were included as new: 8 from the web and 12 threads, scored here; 3 by handoff from information-typing (one blog, two threads). Two public counts (GitHub 2026c, Obsidian 2026) are the reviewer's measurements and are not scored.
    • Excluded: Q/A threads not included after the title or the thread, 306; tickets, fan and catalogue pages, 41.
    • Also excluded: pages with no data or unreachable (two Web Almanac chapters, two 404 pages, one paywalled guideline), 5.
  • Existing reviews found: 7, placed in review.md strand 0.

The figure draws the stages of the table for progressive disclosure.

6,485 formal hits were returned and 422 screened; 377 grey results were screened. 41 formal and 23 grey sources were added, and 6 formal and 1 grey carried, for 71 sources in the review.

Formal sources

"lead" means named in the brief or recalled, then verified against Crossref or arXiv before use.

Key Kind Found via Quality Used in
Cockburn 2009 formal F6, F8; lead review, read in full review 0, 4; state-of-the-art; position; against; baseline
Chen 1996 formal lead meta-analysis of 23 experiments, abstract (secondary) review 0, 3; state-of-the-art; against
Dillon 1998 formal R1 review, abstract review 0; against
Brusilovsky 2001 formal R1, R2 survey, relevant sections read review 0; frame; against
Knutov 2009 formal R2 survey, title only review 0
Lam 2011 formal R3 synthesis of studies, title only review 0
DeStefano 2007 formal, carried held by learning-science review of 38 studies review 0, 3
Furnas 1986 formal F7; lead measured, one experiment of 20 subjects, full text frame; review 1, 2, 5; state-of-the-art; position; against
Engelbart 1968 formal snowball, Furnas 1986 title and venue only review 1
Bederson 1994 formal lead system, title only frame; review 1
Robertson 1993 formal F7, F10 system, title and Cockburn 2009 review 1
Carroll 1984 formal lead measured, abstract frame; review 1
Egan 1989 formal lead; snowball, Chimera 1994 measured, abstract (secondary) review 2; state-of-the-art
Chimera 1994 formal F16 measured, 41 novices, technical report version read frame; review 2, 5; state-of-the-art; position; against; baseline
Hornbæk 2003 formal F10 measured, full text review 2; state-of-the-art; position; against; baseline
Höök 1997 formal F1, F20 descriptive, full text (9 subjects, no statistical test) review 2
McDonald 2009 formal F21 measured, 749 Internet users, authors' version read frame; review 2; state-of-the-art; position; against; baseline
Springer 2020 formal F4 measured, four studies, abstract review 2
Zellweger 2000 formal lead located only review 2
Boyle 1994 formal lead located only review 2
Mohageg 1992 formal lead measured, full text frame; review 3; state-of-the-art; position; against
McDonald 1998 formal lead measured, full text frame; review 3; position; against; baseline
McDonald 1996 formal F11, F12 located only review 3
Calisir 2003 formal F11 located only review 3
Potelle 2003 formal lead located only review 3
Amadieu 2009 formal, carried held by learning-science and reading-order measured, one study review 3
Hornbæk 2002 formal F9 measured, 32 subjects, abstract frame; review 4; state-of-the-art; against; baseline
Jakobsen 2006 formal F24 measured, through Cockburn 2009 (secondary) review 4; state-of-the-art
Nekrasovski 2006 formal snowball, Cockburn 2009 measured, through Cockburn 2009 (secondary) review 4; against
Plaisant 2002 formal snowball, Cockburn 2009 measured, through Cockburn 2009 (secondary) review 4
Baudisch 2002 formal F6, F8 measured, through Cockburn 2009 (secondary) review 4
Kiger 1984 formal, carried held by file-structure measured, menus review 5
Larson 1998 formal, carried held by file-structure measured, web sites review 5
Conklin 1987 formal, carried held by typography-and-layout survey frame
Wu 2021 formal F17, A1 abstract (secondary); its scores read in Sarthi 2024 frame; review 6
Sarthi 2024 formal F18, A3; lead measured on benchmarks, full text frame; review 6; state-of-the-art; against; baseline
Chen 2023 formal lead measured on benchmarks, abstract review 6
Chang 2024 formal lead measured, 100 books, abstract (secondary) review 6; against
Edge 2024 formal snowball, He 2026 measured on one corpus class, abstract review 6
Laitenberger 2025 formal A3 measured on three benchmarks, EMNLP (2025), full text review 6; state-of-the-art; position; against; baseline
Jayraj 2026 formal F18, A3 measured, preprint, abstract (secondary) review 6; against
He 2026 formal F5 measured on ∞Bench, preprint, full text frame; review 5, 6; state-of-the-art; position; against; baseline
Otter 2000 formal F12 title only baseline
Heinonen 2022 formal handoff, information-typing exploratory user studies, three countries, abstract (secondary) review 2
Swarts 2022 formal handoff, information-typing measured, descriptive, corpus, abstract review 5
Mortezaagha 2026 formal handoff, information-typing measured, 2,359 articles, preprint, abstract (secondary) review 6
Garousi 2019 formal, carried method guidelines protocol

Grey sources, scored

Subtotals as in the evidence README.

Key Kind Found via Quality (total, then subtotals) Used in
Nielsen 2006b grey tier 2 P 12.5 of 20 (4 / 3.5 / 1 / 1 / 0.5 / 1 / 1 / 0.5) frame; review 1, 5, 7; state-of-the-art; position; against
GOV.UK 2026a grey tier 1 P 17 of 20 (4 / 5 / 3.5 / 1 / 0.5 / 1 / 1 / 1) review 7; state-of-the-art; position
GOV.UK 2026b grey tier 1 P 16 of 20 (4 / 4.5 / 3.5 / 1 / 0.5 / 0.5 / 1 / 1) review 7; state-of-the-art; position
W3C 2026b grey tier 1 P 14.5 of 20 (4 / 4 / 3.5 / 0 / 0.5 / 0.5 / 1 / 1) review 7
WHATWG 2026 grey tier 1 P 15.5 of 20 (4 / 4 / 3.5 / 1 / 0.5 / 0.5 / 1 / 1) frame; review 7; state-of-the-art; position
Wikimedia 2016 grey tier 2 G1 17 of 20 (3.5 / 5.5 / 3.5 / 1 / 0.5 / 2 / 0.5 / 0.5) review 7; state-of-the-art; position; against; baseline
Wikipedia 2026c grey tier 2 G2 11 of 20 (0.5 / 3.5 / 3.5 / 1 / 1 / 0.5 / 0.5 / 0.5) frame; review 1
VectifyAI 2026 grey tier 2 P 9 of 20 (2 / 3.5 / 0.5 / 0.5 / 0.5 / 0.5 / 1 / 0.5) review 7; state-of-the-art; against (example only)
Wang 2023 grey tier 2, carried held by typography-and-layout 9 of 20 there review 7; against (example only)
UXSE 2010 grey tier 2 RD2 14 of 20 (2 / 4.5 / 3.5 / 1 / 0 / 1.5 / 1 / 0.5) review 7
UXSE 2012a grey tier 2 RD1 14.5 of 20 (1.5 / 5 / 3.5 / 1 / 0.5 / 1.5 / 1 / 0.5) review 7
UXSE 2012b grey tier 2 RD15 12 of 20 (1.5 / 4 / 3 / 1 / 0.5 / 1 / 0.5 / 0.5) review 7; against
UXSE 2014b grey tier 2 RD6 10 of 20 (1 / 3 / 3 / 1 / 0 / 1 / 0.5 / 0.5) review 7; position
UXSE 2015 grey tier 2 RD14 11 of 20 (1 / 4 / 3 / 1 / 0 / 1.5 / 0 / 0.5) review 7
UXSE 2016 grey tier 2 RD16 8 of 20 (0.5 / 2.5 / 2.5 / 1 / 0 / 0.5 / 0.5 / 0.5) review 7 (example only)
UXSE 2018a grey tier 2 RD5 9.5 of 20 (0.5 / 3.5 / 3 / 1 / 0 / 1 / 0 / 0.5) review 7 (example only)
WSE 2013 grey tier 2 RD9 11 of 20 (0.5 / 4 / 3.5 / 1 / 0.5 / 1 / 0 / 0.5) review 7; baseline
WSE 2018e grey tier 2 RD9 13 of 20 (2 / 4.5 / 3.5 / 1 / 0.5 / 1 / 0 / 0.5) review 7
SESE 2011o grey tier 2 RD11 15 of 20 (2.5 / 4.5 / 3.5 / 1 / 0.5 / 1.5 / 1 / 0.5) review 7; against
SESE 2011r grey tier 2 RD12 13 of 20 (0.5 / 4.5 / 3.5 / 1 / 0.5 / 1.5 / 1 / 0.5) review 7
SESE 2014e grey tier 2 RD12 14 of 20 (2 / 4.5 / 3.5 / 1 / 0.5 / 1.5 / 0.5 / 0.5) review 7; position; against
Johnson 2013 grey tier 3 handoff, information-typing 13 of 20 there (2 / 4.5 / 3 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 0.5 / 0) review 2
WSE 2018c grey tier 2 handoff, information-typing 12.5 of 20 there (2 / 4 / 2.5 / 1 / 0.5 / 1.5 / 0.5 / 0.5) review 7
UXSE 2018b grey tier 2 handoff, information-typing 8.5 of 20 (0.5 / 3 / 2.5 / 1 / 0.5 / 0.5 / 0 / 0.5) review 7 (example only)

Counts, not scored: GitHub 2026c (stars and topic counts) and Obsidian 2026 (plugin downloads), both read on 2026-10-29, used in state-of-the-art.md.

Result of the scoring

  • 21 grey sources scored here: 8 from the web, 13 Q/A threads; 2 more keep their information-typing scores. 4 fall below 10: VectifyAI 2026, UXSE 2016, UXSE 2018a, UXSE 2018b. With the carried Wang 2023, 5 are examples only.
  • UXSE 2014b sits exactly at 10 and stays in.
  • The highest scores go to a government design system (GOV.UK 2026a) and a research wiki page with data (Wikimedia 2016).
  • A Q/A thread scores 0.5 on authority for the site, plus 1 for a top answerer at or above 20,000 reputation, or 0.5 at or above 5,000.
  • Impact is 1 at 20,000 views or 30 votes, 0.5 at 3,000 views or 10 votes.
  • Reputation, votes and views are those of 2026-10-29.