{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__gender_studies","trajectory_id":"R","attempt_index":0,"archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"gender_studies","decision":"CANDIDATE","problem_id":"superseded_gender_research_artifacts_masquerade_as_current","causal_lever_id":"explicit_artifact_lifecycle_state_and_supersession_routing","proposal":{"problem":"Successive versions of gender- and sexuality-related survey instruments, identity-category codebooks, consent language, analytic guidance, and crosswalks can remain equally discoverable after their terminology, population fit, or institutional authority has changed. Researchers may then reuse a superseded artifact as current, while indiscriminate cleanup can erase evidence needed to interpret historical datasets, reproduce findings, or audit past representational choices.","actors_substrate":["research participants and represented communities","gender and sexuality researchers","repository curators and data stewards","ethics and records-governance authorities","survey instruments, codebooks, consent templates, category crosswalks, and guidance versions","institutional repositories, search indexes, and downstream citations"],"observable_state":"Repository searches or shared folders return multiple contradictory versions without reliable current, superseded, restricted, or historical-use labels; old artifacts are reused without a documented compatibility decision.","consequence":"Researchers can apply categories or guidance that no longer fit the population or study context, impairing validity and representation, while ungoverned deletion can break longitudinal interpretation, reproducibility, and accountability.","affected_objective":"Reduce wrong-version reuse and interpretive ambiguity while preserving historically necessary evidence and respecting participant, ethical, and records-governance constraints.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"sequential deposits","domain_realization":"Successive instruments, codebooks, crosswalks, consent templates, and analytic guidance accumulate as versioned research artifacts.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"stale layers remain active","domain_realization":"A superseded artifact can remain searchable and appear authoritative when lifecycle state and successor routing are absent.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"},{"archetype_element":"retention versus removal tension","domain_realization":"Removing outdated artifacts may prevent misuse but can also erase the context required to interpret historical data and decisions.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"preservation exceptions","domain_realization":"Artifacts tied to published results, participant commitments, investigations, contested histories, or locally documented holds may require extended preservation.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"bounded, inspectable stack","domain_realization":"Current-use materials are separated from a labeled, recoverable historical collection with recorded disposition decisions.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"}],"component_map":[{"component":"layer_inventory_and_identity_map","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Canonical registry of each artifact and version."},{"component":"deposition_order_and_age_index","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Creation, approval, supersession, and last-review dates."},{"component":"retention_policy_matrix","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Rules by artifact class and research obligation."},{"component":"decay_function_or_aging_rule","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Review priority rises with contextual change and time since validation, not age alone."},{"component":"expiration_trigger_definition","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Review is triggered by a successor, changed study context, broken reference, or elapsed review interval."},{"component":"layer_value_and_risk_score","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Transparent indicators for reuse risk, historical value, sensitivity, and reconstruction value."},{"component":"dependency_and_reconstruction_check","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Check datasets, publications, protocols, citations, and audit paths before removal."},{"component":"pruning_or_archival_pathway","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Refresh, supersede, restrict, archive, quarantine, or delete."},{"component":"preservation_exception_register","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Named historical, evidentiary, participant, or scholarly exceptions."},{"component":"deletion_audit_and_rollback_window","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Logged soft deletion with a restoration period."},{"component":"resource_budget_and_storage_tier","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Budgets for curator attention, search prominence, access control, and storage."},{"component":"review_cadence_and_revalidation_loop","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Periodic owner review of labels, successors, and exceptions."},{"component":"legal_hold_or_compliance_override","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Locally authorized ethics, investigation, records, or litigation holds override disposal."},{"component":"hot_warm_cold_access_state","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Current-use, limited-use, and historical-only visibility states."},{"component":"orphan_layer_detection","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Identify artifacts with no unresolved dataset, publication, protocol, or citation dependency."},{"component":"supersession_marker","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Persistent notice naming the approved successor and permitted historical use."},{"component":"layer_compaction_candidate_flag","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag duplicate copies for a preserved canonical bundle without collapsing distinct versions."},{"component":"rehydration_or_restore_procedure","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Documented recovery of archived artifacts with metadata and links intact."},{"component":"deletion_impact_estimate","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Estimate interpretive, participant, reproducibility, and dependency consequences."},{"component":"stale_context_detector","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag contradictions with approved successors, changed terminology, broken references, or missing owners."}],"mechanism_dispositions":[{"slug":"age_weighted_value_score","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Rejected because scholarly and historical value need not decay with age, and a composite score could conceal contested judgments.","counterfactual_removal":"No loss; explicit indicators and accountable review remain."},{"slug":"archive_restore_test","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"TEST_DESIGN","adaptation_or_rejection":"Sample archived artifacts across formats and ages; verify retrieval, readability, metadata fidelity, and citation reconnection.","counterfactual_removal":"Archival recoverability would remain assumed rather than demonstrated."},{"slug":"cache_eviction_rule","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Access recency is not a defensible proxy for epistemic, historical, or ethical importance.","counterfactual_removal":"No loss because fast-tier capacity is not the causal problem."},{"slug":"dependency_safe_delete_check","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Deletion is blocked while any dataset, publication, protocol, citation, or audit dependency remains unresolved.","counterfactual_removal":"Cleanup could destroy interpretation and reproducibility paths, hard-gating viability."},{"slug":"lifecycle_storage_tiering_policy","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Visibility states are useful, but storage-cost migration is peripheral to wrong-version reuse.","counterfactual_removal":"The causal intervention still works through labeling, search routing, and archival access."},{"slug":"log_rotation_and_cleanup_job","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Content-blind generational purging is unsuitable for heterogeneous research artifacts.","counterfactual_removal":"No loss."},{"slug":"retention_schedule","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Map artifact classes to review periods, lifecycle states, disposition authority, exceptions, and locally valid holds.","counterfactual_removal":"Artifacts would revert to ad hoc active-by-default retention."},{"slug":"soft_delete_quarantine_window","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Use reversible removal with an impact-sized grace period; prohibit it where an authorized hard-deletion requirement applies.","counterfactual_removal":"Mistaken cleanup becomes harder to reverse."},{"slug":"stale_layer_detection_dashboard","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Inventory artifacts and surface contextual-staleness signals for owner review without automatically acting.","counterfactual_removal":"The intervention loses systematic discovery of misleading active artifacts."},{"slug":"time_to_live_ttl_policy","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"A fixed self-executing lifetime is too blind for contested, historically valuable, or dependency-bearing artifacts; elapsed time may trigger review only.","counterfactual_removal":"No loss because expiry remains review-gated."},{"slug":"tombstone_or_deletion_marker","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Leave a durable supersession or deletion record that preserves identity, rationale, date, and successor routing.","counterfactual_removal":"Absence becomes ambiguous and surviving citations may misresolve."}],"causal_chain":["Inventory identity-resolved artifact versions and their dependencies.","Detect contextual staleness and missing authority labels.","Assign explicit current, review, superseded, restricted, historical, quarantined, or deleted states under class-specific rules.","Route ordinary search toward approved current artifacts while preserving labeled historical access.","Gate removal on authority, exceptions, dependencies, impact assessment, and reversible quarantine.","Record successors and disposition evidence, then test restoration periodically.","Wrong-version reuse should fall without sacrificing historical interpretation or accountability."],"baseline":"Ad hoc shared folders and repositories retain nearly everything, rely on filenames, dates, owner memory, or a latest-version link, and issue manual corrections after misuse.","nearest_rival":"An immutable versioned repository with a prominently maintained current-version index, but no decay triggers, exception register, dependency-gated disposition, or restoration testing.","authority_safety":{"affected_parties":["participants whose identities or data are represented","communities described by the categories","researchers and students reusing artifacts","authors and repository curators","ethics, records, and investigation authorities"],"decision_authority":"The repository data steward may label and route artifacts; irreversible disposition requires the artifact owner plus the locally designated ethics or records authority, with consultation of affected-community representatives when representational stakes are material.","authorized_first_step":"Run a 90-day, read-only pilot on at most 100 artifacts from two consenting research collections. Add proposed lifecycle and successor labels, compare wrong-version selection and retrieval time with matched baseline searches, and conduct restore drills; make no deletion or access restriction.","excluded_actions":["automatic hard deletion","retroactive recoding of published datasets","overwriting distinct historical versions","treating age or unpopular terminology alone as proof of invalidity","exposing restricted participant data","lifting an authorized hold","claiming one vocabulary is universally current"],"halt_rollback":"Halt label rollout if unresolved dependencies appear, restore fidelity fails, affected owners identify material misclassification, or historical retrieval worsens without reduced wrong-version selection. Remove pilot labels and restore the prior index from the recorded snapshot."}},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"The strongest plausible counterevidence is that existing repositories already distinguish versions reliably and that apparent use of old artifacts is intentional historical or longitudinal work rather than mistaken current use.","analogy_break":"Gender and sexuality concepts do not decay monotonically: older or contested categories can remain essential evidence, and communities may disagree about what counts as superseded. Treating conceptual disagreement as technical staleness would reproduce the harm the intervention seeks to reduce.","failure_condition":"Lifecycle labels become a gatekeeping device that suppresses minority frameworks, or curator workload and disagreement prevent labels from remaining more reliable than ordinary version control.","problem_falsifier":"A representative audit finds negligible accidental selection of superseded artifacts, no material search or interpretation burden, and reliable existing preservation of dependencies and historical context.","intervention_falsifier":"Against the nearest rival, the pilot does not reduce wrong-version selection or decision time, or it increases failed historical retrieval, unresolved citations, representational complaints, or restore failures beyond preset tolerances.","risks":["false staleness judgments can marginalize contested or minority concepts","labels may acquire unjustified institutional authority","historical evidence may become practically inaccessible despite formal retention","sensitive artifacts may remain exposed during quarantine","dependency checks may miss external citations or privately held copies","curation burdens may shift to precarious researchers or affected communities"]},"null_rationale":null,"classification":{"candidate_kind":"DOMAIN_TRANSFER","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","evidence_maturity":"HYPOTHESIS"},"revision_change_log":{"revision_kind":"ORIGINAL","prior_problem_id":null,"prior_causal_lever_id":null,"problem_changed":false,"causal_lever_changed":false,"conceptual_changes":[],"operational_changes":[],"repairs_addressed":[]},"confidence":0.78,"generator_notes":"Closed-book structural transfer. Domain prevalence, effect size, and institutional feasibility are unverified; all such claims are hypotheses or inferences rather than prior-art findings."}