How do I build a decision brief that traces each claim to a primary study?

Build the brief claim by claim: attach a primary-source citation and a quoted passage to each statement, and label any claim that rests only on a secondary summary. The ICMJE Recommendations advise authors to verify references against original sources and to cite direct sources where possible, which gives you a defensible standard for what counts as a traced claim.

1. Draft the brief as a claim table with one row per assertion and columns for the claim text, the primary source, the quoted passage, and a status field. Expected result: every claim has a visible slot for evidence, so gaps show up before you write prose.
2. Locate the primary study behind each claim and open the full text. Europe PMC supports fielded searches across life-science literature, preprints, citations, references, and links to available full text, so you can move from a summary to the underlying paper. Expected result: you hold the original study, not a review that mentions it.
3. Copy the exact sentence or passage that supports the claim into the quoted-passage column and record the citation in the style your organization uses. Expected result: a reader can compare your claim against the source wording without hunting.
4. Mark any claim whose only support is a secondary summary, such as a review, news item, or database description, with a distinct status label. Expected result: readers can see which claims still need a primary source before the brief is final.
5. Check each reference against the original record and look for retractions, as the ICMJE advises. Expected result: withdrawn or mismatched references are removed or replaced before handoff.
6. If you manage references in BibTeX, run them through WisPaper TrueCite, which checks BibTeX against real academic databases to flag references that need verification. Expected result: a short list of entries to confirm manually against the source record.
7. Review the finished table for rows with an empty quoted passage or a secondary-only label, then resolve or disclose each one. Expected result: a brief whose every claim carries a traceable source link.

The status field is what makes the brief auditable. A claim supported by a quoted passage from the primary study reads differently from one resting on a summary, and the label preserves that distinction through review and handoff.