Editorial Standards

STEMLaunch Editorial Team · Last updated: September 2026

STEMLaunch publishes careers education content for people deciding what to do next. These are the standards we hold our own work to, so you can judge how much weight to give it.

Our editorial mission

Information about STEM careers in the UK is scattered across government services, university prospectuses, professional bodies and employer sites, and much of it assumes you already know the jargon. Our job is to pull that together into plain-English guides that answer the question you actually asked, with UK-specific detail on entry routes, qualifications and pay.

Who writes STEMLaunch

Content is produced and published by the STEMLaunch editorial team, and articles are attributed that way. We do not attach individual bylines, and we do not claim that our guides have been reviewed by a named doctor, engineer, teacher or recruiter. If an article ever is reviewed by a named professional, we will say so explicitly on that article.

How we research articles

We start from the search question — what someone typing that phrase actually needs to know — rather than from a keyword target.
We check facts against primary sources before publishing: official guidance, published salary scales, awarding bodies and the organisations that run the route in question.
Where sources disagree, we say so rather than picking the most flattering number.
Where something is genuinely uncertain or varies by employer, we describe the range instead of inventing a single figure.

Sources we rely on

UK government sources — GOV.UK, the National Careers Service, the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, UCAS and the Office for National Statistics.
NHS sources — NHS Health Careers and published Agenda for Change pay scales for healthcare roles.
Professional and regulatory bodies — for example the IET, IMechE, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Society of Radiographers, BCS and the HCPC, depending on the field.
Universities and awarding bodies — for entry requirements, course structures and graduate outcomes.
Employers — official careers pages for programme structure, locations and advertised pay.

We prefer primary sources over aggregators. Where we do cite crowd-sourced salary data, we label it as such, because self-reported figures are not equivalent to a published pay scale.

How we handle salary information

We use published pay scales where they exist — for example NHS Agenda for Change bands, apprenticeship minimum rates and advertised graduate scheme salaries.
We distinguish between training pay, newly qualified pay, experienced pay and senior pay, because a single 'average' hides most of what matters.
We state that figures are before tax and typically exclude London weighting, overtime and bonuses unless we say otherwise.
We date salary information, because pay scales are revised. If a figure looks stale, tell us and we will recheck it.
We never estimate a salary figure to fill a gap. If we cannot source it, we say the data is not available.

Keeping content up to date

Careers content decays: pay scales are uprated, apprenticeship standards are withdrawn, employers close programmes. We review guides periodically and after any change we become aware of, and each article shows the date it was last updated. An updated date means the content was rechecked, not just republished.

Corrections

If we get something wrong, we fix it. Email hello@stemlaunch.org with the page and the issue. Substantive factual corrections are made promptly and the article's updated date is changed; where a correction materially alters the advice, we note it on the page.

How we use AI

We use AI tools as part of our workflow — for drafting, structuring and summarising. We are open about this because it is common practice and hiding it would be dishonest.

No article is published straight from a model. Every piece is reviewed and edited by the STEMLaunch editorial team before it goes live.
Facts, figures and entry requirements are verified against the sources listed above, not taken from model output.
Model output is cut where it is generic, repetitive or padded. We would rather publish a short useful guide than a long empty one.
The AI Career Advisor is a separate, clearly-labelled interactive tool. Its suggestions are generated live and are informational starting points, not vetted advice.

Independence and advertising

STEMLaunch is free to read and funded partly by advertising, including Google AdSense. Advertising is served automatically and advertisers have no input into our editorial content, rankings or recommendations. Any sponsored or paid placement will be labelled as such. Employer and university profiles are editorial and are not paid for unless explicitly marked.

What we will not do

Invent authors, experts, reviewers, testimonials, ratings or awards.
Fabricate statistics or salary figures.
Claim partnerships or endorsements we do not have.
Present guesswork as guidance.

Limits of what we publish

STEMLaunch provides careers education and information. It is not personalised careers guidance, and it is not financial, legal, medical or immigration advice. Entry requirements and pay vary by employer, region and year — always check the official source before making a decision.

Read more about who we are on the About page, or contact us.