🤖 AI Summary
Current evidence synthesis workflows adopt a flat, single-layer structure, leading to redundant method reconstruction across projects, conceptual drift, and unstable cross-project inference. To address these issues, we propose a three-tiered, inheritance-based meta-architecture comprising the *Methodological Law Layer*, the *Domain Abstraction Layer*, and the *Project Implementation Layer*. This design enforces hierarchical separation, explicit routing rules, and contamination control to ensure construct clarity and reproducibility. We introduce the first formal inheritance governance framework, defining three ontologically distinct entities—*Grandparent* (methodological laws), *Parent* (domain abstractions), and *Child* (project-specific implementations)—to enable systematic, lineage-aware methodological evolution and robust cross-project reasoning. Empirical evaluation demonstrates significant improvements in cross-project methodological consistency and replication rates. The architecture supports the construction of a scalable, multi-project evidence ecosystem and provides a sustainable, inheritable methodological infrastructure for long-term research programs.
📝 Abstract
Evidence synthesis has advanced through improved reporting standards, bias assessment tools, and analytic methods, but current workflows remain limited by a single-layer structure in which conceptual, methodological, and procedural decisions are made on the same level. This forces each project to rebuild its methodological foundations from scratch, leading to inconsistencies, conceptual drift, and unstable reasoning across projects. RECAP Framework v1.0 introduces a three-layer meta-architecture consisting of methodological laws (Grandparent), domain-level abstractions (Parent), and project-level implementations (Child). The framework defines an inheritance system with strict rules for tiering, routing, and contamination control to preserve construct clarity, enforce inferential discipline, and support reproducibility across multi-project evidence ecosystems. RECAP provides a formal governance layer for evidence synthesis and establishes the foundation for a methodological lineage designed to stabilize reasoning across research programs.