Glossary
What Is ECI (Evidence Chain Integrity)
ECI is the share of sampled claims that pass all six hops, showing whether evidence chains actually work.
- Author
- Xingge
- Published
- 2026-11-09
- Updated
- 2026-11-09
- Level
- L2 Reproducible
- Version
- 1.0
Term details
- Name
- What Is ECI (Evidence Chain Integrity)
- Type
- Glossary
- ID
- eci-definition-en
What Is ECI (Evidence Chain Integrity)
ECI (Evidence Chain Integrity) is the share of sampled claims that pass all six hops. ECI measures whether evidence chains work, not the number of pages or the number of external links.
Definition
This site's working definition: within a given sample, walk each claim through all six stages one by one; only claims that pass every stage count as passing items.
The calculation is passing items divided by sampled items. The sampling method, sampling date, and the person who judged must be published together with the result; otherwise the result cannot be reviewed.
Boundaries: what it is easily confused with
| Easily confused concept | Key difference |
|---|---|
| Broken evidence rate | The broken rate looks at the share of failed items; ECI looks at the share that passes the whole chain |
| External link count | Count does not reflect verifiability |
| Index rate | Index rate is an SEO measure |
Common misconceptions
- Replacing ECI with the total number of external links. Many links that cannot be reached still leave ECI low.
- Sampling only high-quality pages. Selective sampling distorts the result.
- Not publishing the sampling rules. A metric that cannot be reproduced has no reference value.
Basis and verification
This definition is this site's working definition, marked L2. Calculation details and limitations are on the evidence chain integrity metric page in the metric index, and the operating details of the six hops are in the method index.
Review cycle: 180 days.
Related sections: glossary index, method index, metric index, editorial policy.