{"schema_version":1,"assessment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_opportunity320_20260801","source_experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__statistics_experimental_design","archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"statistics_experimental_design","title":"Lifecycle-state gating for superseded experimental artifacts","opportunity_summary":"Apply explicit current, superseded, archived, held, and deletion-pending states to study artifacts so obsolete versions lose ordinary operational authority while lineage, prespecification evidence, retention obligations, and restoration remain protected. The candidate is testable through a read-only, reversible comparison, but problem prevalence, incremental benefit, prior-art distance, and institution-scale governance burden are unmeasured.","adopter_authorizer":"The study sponsor or accountable institution, with approval and advice from the principal investigator, lead statistician, data steward, records/privacy officers, and applicable ethics or regulatory bodies.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":4,"rationale":"Using an obsolete protocol, outcome definition, randomization specification, stopping rule, analysis plan, code version, or derived dataset could materially change inference or reported results. The consequence is important, although the frequency and aggregate impact of such errors are unsupported."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":3,"rationale":"Investigators, statisticians, coordinating-center staff, sponsors, and reviewers have plausible incentives to reduce wrong-version use without losing evidence. The packet supplies no observed demand, complaints, adoption requests, or prevalence data."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":3,"rationale":"Relative to immutable version control with a current-version pointer, the proposal adds class-specific retention, holds, dependency checks, reversible quarantine, tombstones, and restoration testing. Whether those additions improve selection or review enough to justify governance overhead remains untested."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":2,"rationale":"The integrated application to experimental artifacts is coherent, but prior-art status is explicitly unsearched and the mechanisms overlap conceptually with version control, records management, artifact registries, and governed retention systems. Distinctiveness cannot be established closed-book."},"technical_implementability":{"score":4,"rationale":"A read-only inventory, lifecycle labels, scripted retrieval tasks, dependency simulations, and restoration checks are technically bounded and plausible for one study. Implementation becomes difficult where artifact identity, approval status, or external dependencies cannot be reliably resolved."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The sponsor or accountable institution is identifiable, and relevant advisers are named. Feasibility is mixed because authority may be distributed across investigators, records/privacy functions, sponsors, ethics bodies, regulators, and external repositories."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":4,"rationale":"The candidate specifies a four-week read-only test, a baseline comparison, measurable wrong-version retrieval and review outcomes, intervention and problem falsifiers, and explicit halt conditions. Representative-study sampling and measurement procedures still require definition."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":5,"rationale":"The mechanism directly addresses the tension between reducing obsolete artifacts' authority and preserving prespecification, lineage, auditability, and reconstruction. Read-only testing, reversible labels, holds, tombstones, restore checks, and exclusions on deletion provide unusually strong safeguards for the first step."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"Lifecycle states and class-based rules could be reused across studies, but heterogeneous repositories, retention duties, approval structures, dependency graphs, and study sizes may require substantial local configuration and governance."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"A four-week, single-study read-only inventory and labeling exercise, scripted baseline-versus-gated retrieval tasks, simulated dependency checks, and restoration testing with documented findings.","confidence":"MODERATE","assumptions":["Existing repositories can be accessed without purchasing a major platform.","A small cross-functional team can identify a bounded artifact set.","No source artifact, approved record, or production search configuration is changed.","The evaluation includes staff time, coordination, scripting, and analysis."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Design and configure lifecycle metadata, approval rules, retention classes, holds, audit logging, discovery gating, and restore procedures for an initial multi-study environment.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The institution can extend existing repository or workflow systems.","The scope excludes large-scale repository replacement and legacy-data remediation.","Legal, privacy, records, statistical, and technical staff participate in policy and acceptance testing.","Integrations are limited to a small number of principal repositories."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Institutional rollout across multiple study teams and repositories, including integrations, metadata migration, training, governance approval, validation, monitoring, and initial operating support.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The launch covers one institution or coordinating center rather than a multinational sponsor ecosystem.","Some legacy artifacts require manual identity and status resolution.","Regulated validation and compliance effort may be required.","The launch preserves existing immutable records and does not perform automatic deletion."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Ongoing stewardship, exception and hold management, lifecycle reviews, restore exercises, monitoring, training, system maintenance, and audit support for an institutional deployment.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Most lifecycle processing is rule-assisted but retains human review for disputed states.","Repository licensing is largely pre-existing.","Study volume and regulatory complexity remain moderate.","Major migrations or platform replacements are excluded."]}},"research_burden":"MODERATE","earliest_credible_horizon":"0_TO_3_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"YES","reason":"The candidate specifies observable coexistence of current and obsolete experimental artifacts, concrete wrong-version pathways, preservation constraints, affected objectives, and a falsifier. External work is still needed to establish prevalence and materiality across representative studies."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The study sponsor or accountable institution is named as decision authority, with investigators, statisticians, data stewards, records/privacy officers, and applicable oversight bodies identified as required advisers."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposal claims that lifecycle labels and gated discovery, supplemented by retention, dependency, hold, and restore controls, will outperform ordinary shared-drive or repository practice and the stated version-control rival on wrong-version selection and review time without increasing required-artifact misses or reconstruction failures."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"A four-week, one-study, read-only comparison is defined, with scripted retrieval measures, dependency and restore simulations, falsifiers, and no mutation of source or approved records."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"The first step excludes deletion, approved-record alteration, and hold overrides; disputed status, hidden required artifacts, unresolved dependencies, worsened retrieval, or authority objections trigger halt and label rollback."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"YES","reason":"The candidate supports a bounded single-study test and separable startup, rollout, and recurring scopes. Broad resource-equivalent ranges can be stated, although repository complexity and compliance requirements make deployment estimates low-confidence."}},"blocking_evidence":["Representative evidence that obsolete artifacts are encountered in active study workflows and cause non-negligible selection errors, delay, or audit burden.","Evidence that lifecycle labels and gated discovery improve wrong-version selection or review time versus the existing workflow without increasing missed required artifacts or reconstruction failures.","Evidence that artifact identity, approval state, retention obligations, holds, and dependencies can be resolved reliably enough to support lifecycle decisions.","Prior-art comparison against existing version-control, trial-document governance, records-management, artifact-registry, and regulated study-document capabilities.","Institution-specific evidence on authority, compliance, integration effort, and recurring stewardship burden before operational deployment."],"next_evidence_step":"For one study over four weeks, create a read-only artifact inventory and candidate lifecycle labels, then compare baseline repository search with a simulated gated-discovery view using the same scripted tasks and users. Measure wrong-version selections, task time, required-artifact misses, status disagreements, unresolved dependencies, and successful reconstruction from archived candidates. Falsify advancement if gating does not improve wrong-version selection or review time, or if it causes any material increase in missed required artifacts or reconstruction failures; change no source artifact or approved record.","research_questions":["How often do users encounter superseded artifacts in representative active workflows, and how often do they select them incorrectly?","Which artifact classes and workflow contexts account for most wrong-version risk or review burden?","Can current-versus-superseded status and approval authority be determined consistently across protocols, plans, code, dictionaries, and derived datasets?","How complete and observable are dependencies on external repositories, registrations, software environments, and decision records?","What incremental benefit does lifecycle gating provide over an authoritative current-version pointer and access controls?","What false-label, retrieval-delay, and reconstruction-failure rates are acceptable to investigators and oversight authorities?","Which retention, privacy-deletion, legal-hold, ethics, sponsor, and regulatory rules constrain each lifecycle state?","How much ongoing human stewardship is required, and does that burden exceed the benefit for small or short-lived studies?","Do existing systems already implement the proposed combination closely enough to eliminate meaningful distinctiveness or incremental advantage?"],"recommendation":"PILOT_NOW","uncertainty_constraints":["Closed-book assessment cannot establish problem prevalence, market size, stakeholder demand, realized impact, or prior-art distance.","All cost bands are resource-equivalent planning ranges rather than observed prices or quotations.","Technical feasibility beyond one bounded study depends on repository integration, metadata quality, and dependency observability.","Regulatory, ethics, privacy, retention, and sponsor requirements may vary substantially by institution and study.","The proposal's benefit relative to its nearest rival is hypothetical until the specified comparison is completed."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"Prior art is explicitly unsearched. This assessment finds the lifecycle-state and gated-discovery combination coherent and testable but makes no claim that it is novel, uncommon, commercially differentiated, or absent from existing study-document, records-management, version-control, registry, or reproducible-research systems."}