GuidesMethodology
Glossary
Core terms used throughout Research Atlas.
RA
Research Atlas TeamUpdated February 4, 2026
Editorial Policy
- Guides are curated by the Research Atlas editorial team and revised when workflows, policies, or tooling materially change.
- Factual claims should be traceable to source documents listed in each guide's Sources section.
- Generative outputs are treated as drafts and require researcher verification before use in manuscripts or protocols.
RAG#
Retrieval-Augmented Generation: connects a model to external sources to reduce hallucinations.
Temperature#
Randomness control (0–1). Lower values are more deterministic and factual.
Hallucination#
When a model generates plausible but false information.
Semantic Search#
Search by meaning and intent rather than keyword matching.
Chain-of-Thought (CoT)#
Prompting technique that encourages stepwise reasoning.
Sources
- AI in research report (Glossary)