What goes into an issue of the journal
Putting together an issue of the Tradition involves three arguments with contributors, and they are always the same three. They are worth setting out, because they define what the journal is.
Where the chart data comes from
Every chart in the journal carries its source. Not "born in 1907" but the document the time comes from, and its reliability. A judgement built on an unsourced time is not a judgement; it is an illustration.
This excludes a good deal of interesting material, including most celebrity charts, and we accept that. A rectified time may be used if the rectification is shown and the original is given.
Showing the reasoning
An article must show how it got there, including the testimonies that pointed elsewhere. Every real chart contains contradictions; a judgement is precisely the act of weighing them. An article that lists only the supporting testimonies has removed the part a reader could learn from.
This is also what makes a failed judgement publishable. If the reasoning is visible, a wrong conclusion teaches something — which step was too confident, which testimony was overweighted. A wrong conclusion with hidden reasoning teaches nothing at all.
Predictions before the event
Mundane judgements are published before the period they describe, with dates, in the issue that precedes it. Subscribers keep the issue and can check it afterwards.
This is the requirement contributors resist most, and it is not negotiable. Astrology's credibility problem is not that its predictions fail; every predictive discipline has failures. It is that so few predictions are recorded in a form that could fail.
Translations
Each issue carries at least one primary source in translation, with notes: what the manuscripts say, where they differ, and what the translator decided. This is the slowest part of the work and the reason a subscription costs what it does.