SHERAFY.com is open to funding, sponsorships, commissioned research, product testing, grants, data partnerships and other legitimate collaborations.
What is not for sale is the conclusion.
Our rule is simple:
Money can expand the scope of an investigation. It cannot determine what the investigation is allowed to find.
This page explains how SHERAFY.com handles outside funding, potential conflicts of interest, sponsored research and other relationships that could reasonably matter to readers evaluating our work.
It also exists to remove ambiguity for organizations interested in working with us.
Our Core Principle
SHERAFY.com is not committed to being financially isolated.
We are committed to being intellectually independent.
Those are very different things.
Serious research can require money. Data costs money. Testing costs money. Specialists cost money. Travel, records requests, software, laboratory work, technical analysis and the time required to investigate difficult questions all cost money.
There is therefore nothing inherently improper about someone funding research.
The important question is:
What does the money buy?
Funding may buy the ability to conduct a better investigation.
It does not buy the answer.
Current Funding Status
At the time this policy was published, SHERAFY.com was not receiving outside payment specifically to determine, direct or shape the conclusions of the editorial research published on this site.
If that changes for a particular project, the relevant financial relationship will be disclosed when it could reasonably matter to a reader’s evaluation of the work.
This policy does not mean SHERAFY.com will never accept paid research opportunities.
We are open to them.
But the conditions matter.
What We Are Open To
SHERAFY.com may consider arrangements including:
- Research grants.
- Commissioned investigations.
- Sponsored research.
- Data-access partnerships.
- Product testing and evaluation.
- Access to specialists, laboratories or technical resources.
- Travel or reporting support.
- Research fellowships.
- Documentary or records projects.
- Commercial research engagements.
- Partnerships that allow an investigation to be conducted at a greater scale than would otherwise be possible.
A company, nonprofit organization, advocacy group, researcher, political organization or other interested party may also bring us a question it believes deserves investigation.
That is not inherently a problem.
An interested party may even have a hypothesis.
The dividing line is whether we remain free to determine whether that hypothesis survives contact with the evidence.
What Funding Cannot Buy
SHERAFY.com will not accept an editorial arrangement requiring us to:
- Reach a predetermined conclusion.
- Guarantee favorable coverage.
- Exclude material contradictory evidence.
- Present disputed claims as established facts.
- Use only sources approved by a sponsor.
- Avoid legitimate sources because they are inconvenient to a sponsor.
- Suppress findings because they could damage a financial or political interest.
- Change a factual conclusion because a sponsor dislikes it.
- Manufacture certainty where the evidence is uncertain.
- Manufacture neutrality where the evidence is not balanced.
- Give a sponsor final approval over our conclusions.
- Present advocacy or public-relations material as independent research.
A proposed arrangement does not become acceptable simply because the payment increases.
Nor does changing the terminology change the substance.
Calling something a grant, consulting agreement, research partnership, sponsorship or fellowship does not resolve an editorial conflict if payment remains conditional on producing the desired narrative.
Fund the Question, Not the Answer
There is an important difference between these two proposals:
“We think this issue deserves serious investigation. We are willing to fund the research, and you are free to determine what the evidence shows.”
That may be a legitimate research opportunity.
And:
“We will fund an article about this issue, but these are the sources you should use, this is the framing we expect and this is essentially what the article needs to conclude.”
That is something different.
It may be advertising.
It may be advocacy.
It may be public relations.
Those activities can be perfectly lawful and legitimate professions.
They are simply not independent research.
If an organization needs guaranteed advocacy, it should retain someone offering advocacy services.
If it genuinely wants to know what the evidence shows—even if the answer could contradict its preferred position—then there may be an opportunity to work together.
Sponsors May Have Questions. They Do Not Get Veto Power.
A funding organization may tell us why it believes a subject matters.
It may provide documents.
It may provide datasets.
It may introduce experts.
It may identify evidence it believes has been overlooked.
It may explain its own position.
It may challenge our reasoning or point out factual errors.
We welcome that.
But material supplied by an interested party is treated as material from an interested party.
It does not automatically become neutral evidence because it arrived with research funding.
We remain free to independently verify it, contradict it, contextualize it or conclude that it does not support the claim being made.
Likewise, the existence of a financial relationship does not entitle a sponsor to suppress legitimate findings.
Disclosure of Sponsored or Commissioned Research
When an outside party materially funds a specific investigation or piece of research, and that relationship could reasonably affect how a reader evaluates the work, SHERAFY.com will disclose it.
The disclosure should identify the nature of the relationship clearly enough for readers to understand it.
Depending on the circumstances, that may include:
- Who funded the work.
- What the funding supported.
- Whether the funder proposed the research question.
- Whether the funder supplied data, products or other materials.
- Whether the funder reviewed the work before publication.
- Whether the funder had any authority over methodology or conclusions.
- Other material circumstances necessary to understand the relationship.
Disclosure is not an admission that research is compromised.
It gives readers information they are entitled to have when evaluating potential incentives.
Conflicts of Interest
Not every relationship constitutes a meaningful conflict of interest.
Our standard is practical:
Would a reasonable reader consider this information relevant when evaluating the work?
When the answer is yes, disclosure is generally appropriate.
Potentially relevant conflicts can include material financial interests, consulting arrangements, ownership interests, paid advisory relationships, significant gifts, sponsored travel, employment relationships, close business relationships or other circumstances that create a realistic incentive connected to the subject being investigated.
The existence of a conflict does not automatically invalidate research.
Hiding a material conflict, however, prevents readers from evaluating it for themselves.
Our preference is disclosure rather than concealment.
Products, Reviews and Commercial Research
Companies may provide products, services, software, data or other resources for evaluation.
Providing something for review does not purchase a favorable review.
If receipt of a product, service, payment, commission or other benefit creates a material relationship relevant to the work, that relationship should be disclosed.
The same principle applies to affiliate relationships and other forms of performance-based compensation when they are materially connected to the content.
Commercial relationships must not be represented as independent recommendations when they are not.
Advertising Is Not Editorial Control
Advertising and editorial sponsorship are different relationships.
An advertiser purchasing access to an audience does not thereby purchase control over unrelated editorial findings.
SHERAFY.com does not consider the presence of advertising, by itself, evidence that an advertiser controls our journalism or research.
Likewise, advertisers should not assume that purchasing advertising protects them from criticism or investigation.
Political and Advocacy Organizations
The same standard applies regardless of ideology.
A political organization whose worldview frequently conflicts with ours does not get to purchase a favorable conclusion.
Neither does an organization whose worldview frequently agrees with ours.
Editorial independence becomes meaningless if it is enforced only against people we disagree with.
Political parties, governments, advocacy organizations, lobbying interests, ideological organizations and issue campaigns are therefore subject to the same basic rule as corporations and commercial sponsors:
They may support independent research. They may not purchase its conclusions.
No Organization Owns Our Conclusions
SHERAFY.com publishes across politics, science, medicine, technology, business, history and other subjects where different constituencies frequently have strong interests in the outcome.
That means readers may sometimes encounter one article they strongly agree with and another they strongly oppose.
This is not a contradiction.
An evidence-driven publication should not produce perfectly predictable ideological conclusions.
If every investigation reliably validates the interests of the same political faction, industry, institution or advocacy movement, that consistency itself deserves scrutiny.
Our objective is not to make every constituency happy.
It is to determine what the available evidence most strongly supports.
Claims of Hidden Funding Require Evidence Too
Publications that criticize powerful institutions are sometimes accused of secretly working for their opponents.
Publications that challenge popular narratives may be accused of being government operations, corporate fronts, political operatives, intelligence assets, industry mouthpieces or covert advocacy projects.
Those are factual claims.
They should therefore be evaluated using the same standards we apply to other factual claims: evidence, documentation and verifiability.
A person’s disagreement with an article is not evidence of who funded it.
Likewise, the fact that an article benefits one political argument does not establish that the people who advance that argument paid for it.
Where a material funding relationship actually exists, our policy is to disclose it.
Readers should remain free to scrutinize those disclosures—and our work.
Editorial Independence Does Not Mean Immunity From Criticism
Independence does not mean we are always correct.
Research can contain errors.
Evidence can change.
A source can prove unreliable.
A study can be superseded.
New documents can materially alter an earlier conclusion.
When credible evidence shows that something we published is wrong, incomplete or materially misleading, the appropriate response is correction—not loyalty to the original position.
A sponsor’s interests do not override that responsibility.
Neither does our own pride.
Courtesy Is Not Consent to Negotiate Our Standards
Organizations interested in working with SHERAFY.com are welcome to explain their proposal.
We will listen to serious opportunities.
But when we state that a particular editorial condition is incompatible with our standards, that answer should not be interpreted as the opening position in a negotiation.
Increasing the proposed payment, repeatedly repackaging the same condition, appealing to personal financial considerations or arguing that compromising a conclusion would be beneficial to us does not change the underlying conflict.
If we decline such an arrangement and another party chooses to continue attempting to persuade us, that continued negotiation is their choice.
Please do not interpret professional courtesy, willingness to hear a proposal or discussion of alternative structures as agreement to surrender editorial control.
What a Good Proposal Looks Like
Organizations interested in working with SHERAFY.com do not need to avoid controversial subjects.
Quite the opposite.
Bring us difficult questions.
Bring us datasets.
Bring us documents.
Bring us unusual claims that deserve testing.
Bring us technical problems that have not been adequately investigated.
Bring us research funding.
Bring us hypotheses.
Bring us access.
Bring us experts willing to defend their conclusions.
Bring us evidence you believe the public has overlooked.
Just understand one condition before the conversation begins:
We must remain free to discover that you are wrong.
If that condition is acceptable, there may be something worth discussing.
If it is not, we are probably not the right partner.
Our Commitment
Financial relationships may change as SHERAFY.com grows.
The principle governing them should not.
We believe readers deserve research whose conclusions follow the evidence rather than the preferences of whoever has the largest budget.
We also believe serious independent research deserves sustainable funding.
Those principles are not incompatible.
The boundary is straightforward:
You can fund the research. You cannot buy the conclusion.
That is the standard we intend to maintain.