Editorial Governance & Independence Policy

Our independence framework

Editorial staff at Supplement Science have no compensation tied to conversions, affiliate payouts, or campaign performance. Writers and reviewers are paid for evidence review, scoring accuracy, and timeliness of updates — not for the revenue any page generates.

Commercial partnerships — Amazon Associates, direct brand affiliate arrangements, and Creator Connections programs — never dictate which products are selected, how they are ranked, or what is written about them. The editorial team operates upstream of revenue: selection and scoring decisions are finalized before any commercial routing is applied, and ranking order is frozen against the published methodology regardless of downstream deal economics.

Commercial-editorial separation

Affiliate and partnership operations are functionally separate from editorial judgment. The people who negotiate brand deals, manage campaign onboarding, and reconcile commission reporting are not the same people who score products against our published criteria. Reviewers evaluating a product do not see commission rates, payout tiers, or revenue performance data for that product while scoring it.

Rankings reflect the published evaluation methodology, not deal economics. If a higher-margin product loses on the methodology, it loses on the page.

Affiliate relationships and commission variance

Product selection criteria

Products are evaluated against the same weighted criteria across every comparison page. The standard weights are:

• 30% — Third-party testing: independent lab verification (NSF, USP, ConsumerLab, or equivalent) of purity, potency, and contaminant absence.
• 25% — Dose adequacy: does the label dose match the clinically studied effective dose?
• 20% — Bioavailability: is the ingredient form well absorbed (chelated minerals, methylated B vitamins, etc.)?
• 15% — Value: cost per effective serving, not sticker price.
• 10% — Clean label: minimal additives, no proprietary blends hiding doses.

For the full criteria definitions, scoring rubric, and category-specific weight adjustments, see the complete methodology.

Product re-evaluation cadence

Product rankings are not static. We re-score products when any of the following happens:

• New clinical evidence is published that changes the dose, form, or efficacy picture for an ingredient
• A brand reformulates a product (dose change, form change, excipient change, or third-party test update)
• A brand partnership expires, begins, or changes status
• A product listing goes offline, changes SKU, or is delisted by the merchant
• A reader correction, audit finding, or internal review flags a scoring issue

Routine operational audits verify product availability, price, and link integrity before any ranking change is published. A product that has gone offline is not silently swapped — the change is logged, the new selection is re-scored against the same criteria, and the page is updated.

Conflict disclosure process

When a potential conflict of interest is identified — for example, a reviewer has a prior professional relationship with a brand being evaluated, previously consulted for a manufacturer in the category, or has a personal stake in an outcome — the process is:

1. The reviewer recuses from scoring the affected product or category
2. The item is re-scored by another member of the editorial team against the same published criteria
3. The disclosure is logged internally with the date, the nature of the conflict, and the recusal outcome
4. If the conflict affects content that has already been published, the page is flagged for re-review and updated if the re-score changes the ranking

Conflict disclosures are maintained as an internal record and are available on request for editorial audits.

Corrections handling

When an error is identified — in a citation, a dose figure, a product specification, or a ranking — we correct it promptly and note the change on the affected page. For the full corrections policy, including how to submit a correction and how we log and publish them, see the corrections policy.