# Annotated References (Referenced Copy)

> Annotated references — UK usage "referenced copy" — are pharma deliverables marked with human-readable locators (source/page/column/paragraph) pointing every claim to the exact passage that substantiates it.

> **Annotated references** (US) or **referenced copy** (UK) is promotional material marked so that every claim carries a human-readable pointer to the exact substantiating passage in its source — conventionally *source/page/column/paragraph/lines*, e.g. `Pasieka 2020/pg3/col1/para2/lines2–6`. The annotation exists so reviewers and vault operators can **verify** each claim in seconds rather than hunting through a paper.

The locator grammar is human-visual by design: page, column, paragraph, and line counts refer to the printed page as a reader sees it. Figures and tables are cited by the document's own labels (`Fig. 1`, `Table 3`); unpublished sources (protocols, CSRs) use document title plus version, with named sections standing in where columns don't exist. Derived numbers often carry their arithmetic in the annotation, because reviewers check math that isn't shown.

Annotation has historically been manual, late-stage drudgery — and naive automation has repeatedly failed because text extraction doesn't see what humans see (columns, printed line breaks). The durable pattern is annotation as a *byproduct of evidence-linked writing*: the claim is linked to its passage when written, and the locator generates from that link. See [Claim Annotation & Reference Discovery, Explained](/resources/claim-annotation-explained/) for the full treatment.

---
Source: https://medcom.claims/glossary/annotated-references/ · Updated 2026-07-13 · © Mantir, Inc.