This editorial policy explains how Throughput Journal chooses stories, what we do before a number goes on the page, and how paid placement stays visibly separate from reporting.
Scope
Warehouse operations, automation and robotics, systems and software, fulfilment and 3PL, freight and transport. The reader is the person accountable for throughput and cost per unit. If an article does not change a decision about layout, labour, kit or carriers, it is not worth the space.
Evidence
- We attribute throughput rates, pick productivity, payback periods and freight rates to whoever produced them, with the operation type and the period attached. A rate without an operating context is decoration.
- We identify vendor-supplied figures as vendor-supplied in the sentence where they appear.
- We show payback and ROI claims with their assumptions — volume, shift pattern, labour rate — because those assumptions are where the number actually lives.
- Where we could not confirm a claim, we write that we could not confirm it.
- No fabricated quotes, no invented sites, no case studies about operations that do not exist.
Commercial separation under this editorial policy
Commercial revenue funds the publication, partly through paid partner content, and that side has no access to the editorial desk. Partners do not preview articles, cannot commission favourable coverage and cannot have coverage withdrawn.
In addition, paid work runs as its own product: Partner content label, disclosure panel, no place in the editorial feed, outbound links marked rel="sponsored". We decline paid work that is off-scope or that would misrepresent what a system does on a real floor.
How we produce drafts
We use software, including AI, in research and production. However, we never publish unreviewed output. A person edits every article, and the publication answers for accuracy whatever produced the draft.
Revisions
We revise articles when the underlying facts change, and we date substantive revisions on the page. We leave the dates on unchanged articles alone.
Questions about any of this: editor@throughputjournal.com.