Sufficient information should be documented and disseminated to allow computer-based visualisation methods and outcomes to be understood and evaluated in relation to the contexts and purposes for which they are deployed.

Enhancing Practice

4.1 Documentation strategies should be designed and resourced in such a way that they actively enhance the visualisation activity by encouraging, and helping to structure, thoughtful practice.

4.2 Documentation strategies should be designed to enable rigorous, comparative analysis and evaluation of computer-based visualisations, and to facilitate the recognition and addressing of issues that visualisation activities reveal.

4.3 Documentation strategies may assist in the management of Intellectual Property Rights or privileged information.

Documentation of Knowledge Claims

4.4 It should be made clear to users what a computer-based visualisation seeks to represent, for example the existing state, an evidence-based restoration or an hypothetical reconstruction of a cultural heritage object or site, and the extent and nature of any factual uncertainty.

Documentation of Research Sources

4.5 A complete list of research sources used and their provenance should be disseminated.

Documentation of Process (Paradata)

4.6 Documentation of the evaluative, analytical, deductive, interpretative and creative decisions made in the course of computer-based visualisation should be disseminated in such a way that the relationship between research sources, implicit knowledge, explicit reasoning, and visualisation-based outcomes can be understood.

Documentation of Methods

4.7 The rationale for choosing a computer-based visualisation method, and for rejecting other methods, should be documented and disseminated to allow the activity's methodology to be evaluated and to inform subsequent activities.

4.8 A description of the visualisation methods should be disseminated if these are not likely to be widely understood within relevant communities of practice.

4.9 Where computer-based visualisation methods are used in interdisciplinary contexts that lack a common set of understandings about the nature of research questions, methods and outcomes, project documentation should be undertaken in such a way that it assists in articulating such implicit knowledge and in identifying the different lexica of participating members from diverse subject communities.

Documentation of Dependency Relationships

4.10 Computer-based visualisation outcomes should be disseminated in such a way that the nature and importance of significant, hypothetical dependency relationships between elements can be clearly identified by users and the reasoning underlying such hypotheses understood.

Documentation Formats and Standards

4.11 Documentation should be disseminated using the most effective available media, including graphical, textual, video, audio, numerical or combinations of the above.

4.12 Documentation should be disseminated sustainably with reference to relevant standards and ontologies according to best practice in relevant communities of practice and in such a way that facilitates its inclusion in relevant citation indexes.