Reference Pack

Updated 2026-07-13 · markdown version

A reference pack is the bundle of substantiating sources — published papers, data on file, protocols, the current PI/SmPC — that accompanies a deliverable into review, so that every annotated reference in the material can be verified against the actual passage it cites. An incomplete pack is one of the most common avoidable causes of a stalled review: committees park what they can't verify.

A well-built pack mirrors the deliverable's annotations: each source is present in the exact version cited (paper with page numbers matching the locators, protocol at the cited version number), highlighted or flagged at the substantiating passages, and listed in a manifest keyed to the claims. In tooling terms, the pack is a projection of the claims matrix — if claims are linked to evidence at writing time, the pack assembles itself; if not, someone rebuilds it by hand for every submission.

Practical standards: fix pagination before annotating (a re-typeset PDF breaks every locator), include data-on-file documents with version and date, and ship the pack in the format your review process expects — reviewers should never need to ask for a source.