Editorial Policy

Accountability and scope

PLC Programming IO is responsible for content published under the “PLC Programming IO Editorial Team” byline. A team byline identifies the publisher, not a fictional expert or an implied professional licence. Named contributors or reviewers are shown only when their identity and role can be represented accurately.

We publish general educational material. Nothing on the site replaces machine-specific risk assessment, engineering approval, vendor support, or the requirements of an authority having jurisdiction.

Evidence hierarchy

Sources are selected according to the claim. We prefer, in order:

1. Official standards, regulators, government datasets, and vendor documentation.
2. Reproducible first-party tests with the product version and test conditions recorded.
3. Reputable technical publications, academic work, and clearly attributable subject-matter sources.
4. Community reports used as leads or practical context, not as sole support for safety-critical or compatibility claims.

A citation must support the specific claim beside it. Sources are not added solely to make a page appear authoritative.

Technical review and versioning

• Tutorials should identify the software, firmware, operating system, or standard edition when that detail can change the result.
• Installation and code examples should be tested where practical. If a page is based only on documentation research, it should not imply a hands-on test.
• Prices, free-tier limits, supported instructions, and compatibility claims require a check date and a primary source where available.
• Calculated or modelled values must be labelled as estimates and must not be presented as directly measured data.
• A “last reviewed” or “last modified” date should reflect a real review or material change, not a routine deployment.

See the complete testing methodology.

Comparisons, rankings, and commercial disclosures

PLC Programming IO promotes PLC Simulation Software. When that relationship could affect how a reader interprets a recommendation, the relationship must be disclosed. Promoted and third-party products should be judged against the same published criteria.

• Internal review scores are editorial scores, not customer ratings.
• Ratings and review counts are published only when they come from a traceable collection method.
• Missing test evidence is reported as “not tested” or “not verified,” not converted into a favourable score.
• Material limitations, ownership relationships, and the evaluation date stay visible beside the conclusion.

AI-assisted work

Automated tools, including language models, may assist with research organization, drafts, code checks, or editing. They are not evidence. Factual claims still require source or test verification, and generated examples must be checked before being described as working examples.

We do not create a named expert, credential, customer quotation, test result, or product experience with an automated tool and present it as a real person or event.

Legacy and programmatic content

Parts of the site were produced before this policy was published, including programmatic pages and generic legacy bylines. Those pages do not receive a permanent exemption. Pages that cannot meet an appropriate evidence and usefulness threshold should be corrected, consolidated, excluded from indexing, or removed. Publishing a large number of URL combinations is not itself evidence of quality.