Whitepapers and briefings
Long-form editorial PDFs for national-lab, regulator, and policy audiences. The cover sets whether the document reads as “a CEO sent this” or “a templating tool produced this.” Body conventions follow from the cover’s genre choice.
Pick the genre
Three genres differ on length, authorship, voice, and citation style. Pick one and commit – hybrids that borrow signals across genres read as marketing dressed as research.
| Genre | When to pick | Length | Authority signal |
|---|---|---|---|
lab_tradition |
The document is co-authored by a research institution and reads as institutional research output. | 25-80pp | Institution + multiple co-authors with division affiliation; methodology chapter; full bibliography |
policy_brief |
A named institution with policy standing addresses an audience of policymakers; numbered recommendations are the deliverable. | 8-25pp | Named partners + city; methodology sidebar; “Recommendations to |
ceo_brief |
An operator with field data and a point of view writes directly to a research or policy audience; the byline IS the warrant. | 4-12pp | First-person voice; tight; cited but not bibliography-heavy; declarative recommendations |
See cover.md for the cover spec and the full per-genre matrix; body.md for inside-pages conventions.
When to use this cell
Use the whitepapers cell when the artifact is a multi-page PDF deliverable for a research, policy, or industry audience, and a slide deck would lose the editorial register. Use slides for live presentations, one-pagers for single-page leave-behinds, and case-studies for customer outcome narratives.