Standard Operating Procedure: Building a Policy Document Corpus

Demonstration writing sample. This SOP illustrates my procedural writing. Adapt paths, tools and scope to your own project.

Purpose

To collect institutional policy documents into a research corpus in a way that is complete, dated, reproducible and auditable.

Scope

Applies to publicly available policy and guidance documents. Access-restricted material is out of scope and must not be collected under this procedure.

Procedure

1. Register the source

For each institution, record in the source register: institution name, document title, URL, date located, and who located it. No document enters the corpus without a register entry.

2. Capture the document

1. Save the document in its original format (PDF where offered; otherwise a full-page capture of the HTML).
2. Name the file INSTITUTION_doctype_YYYY-MM-DD.ext using the capture date.
3. Store it in the corpus directory; never edit a captured file.

3. Record capture metadata

Add to the corpus log: file name, source URL, capture date, capture method, and any access notes (e.g. “page states last reviewed March 2026”).

4. Check completeness

Weekly, reconcile the source register against the corpus log. Every registered source must be captured or have a documented reason it was not.

5. Handle document updates

If a source document changes, capture the new version as a new file with the new date. Never overwrite. Record the supersession in the corpus log.

Quality rules

• Original captures are read-only.
• All dates use ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD).
• Any deviation from this SOP is recorded in the corpus log with a reason.

Records produced

Source register, corpus log, and the read-only document archive — together these allow any analysis to be traced back to a dated source document.