Our editorial approach
Our research stories help readers understand a study’s question, discovery and significance. The research library and evidence map help them find the original work and explore further.
We credit the scientists and check consequential claims against the original studies. We explain methods in everyday language, keep uncertainty beside the findings it affects, and distinguish researchers’ conclusions from our suggested follow-up questions. Internal source notes record what was checked and any access limits.
The Last Giraffe takes editorial responsibility for its summaries, interpretation and corrections. A review date describes our editorial work on that version; it is not the study date or a new population count. When a correction changes an article's conclusion, we explain the change and update its modification date.
The Last Giraffe uses AI assistance for writing and source checking. Our editorial checks are not scientific peer review, independent replication or endorsement by the researchers. Source links let readers examine the evidence themselves. Researchers and readers are welcome to suggest papers, supply context or request corrections at science@thelastgiraffe.org.
The corpus contains records that mention giraffes or are classified as potentially relevant to giraffe biology, conservation, health, welfare, management, or enabling technology. Its present coverage spans 1771–2026. Relevance varies, and false positives remain possible.
Records were assembled from scholarly metadata sources and curated additions. Titles, authors, journals, dates, identifiers, citation counts, and open-access links can change as upstream indexes change. The corpus snapshot was generated on September 16, 2026. Public open-access totals are recalculated from paper-level flags because the source file's cached headline total is inconsistent.
The catalogue combines seven research themes with 20 conservation and health topics. A theme and a conservation topic can be selected together; results must match both. The expandable subject groups organise those topics for browsing. They do not imply that the subjects form a strict biological hierarchy.
Initial tags come from bibliographic classification. The research-brief pilot replaces misleading imported tags with source-checked terms for those studies. Search covers titles, authors, publication details, indexed topics and available original summaries. It does not search every paper's full text. Topic counts overlap and do not measure threat prevalence or evidence quality.
Research briefs explain a study's question, setting, methods, findings and limitations in original prose. Their linked sources identify the material used. Proposed follow-up questions are editorial suggestions, separate from the authors' findings. Curated connections explain why another study is relevant; a methodological comparison is not automatically an independent replication.
Research commentaries provide further discussion where available. Source checking is editorial verification, not external peer review or endorsement by the paper's authors. Internal reading notes do not count as published briefs.
The catalogue uses an allowlisted bibliographic export. It excludes researcher emails, affiliations, correspondence records, raw abstracts, copyrighted full text, local file paths, unreviewed summaries, and unpublished pipeline metadata. Research detail pages can separately reproduce an abstract when we have verified the specific publication's reuse licence and recorded its source, credit, licence and changes. An open-access flag alone is not permission to republish.
Our original previews and existing research commentaries are separate from reproduced source text. Related-by-topic suggestions use the catalogue's first-pass classifications; they are not a claim that one paper cites or confirms another. Full papers are not automatically mirrored. Crossref's metadata licensing guidance distinguishes bibliographic facts from copyright in abstracts; CC BY 4.0 explains the attribution and reuse conditions for the current hosted-abstract pilot.
Use the library to discover sources, not as a substitute for reading them. For a practical example, follow a conservation claim to its evidence. Corrections, missing papers, access changes, and classification challenges are welcome at science@thelastgiraffe.org.
Public data