Document Review

Document review is a core research method used across diplomacy, law, intelligence analysis, and policy work. It involves the structured reading of primary and secondary texts to identify relevant facts, positions, precedents, or inconsistencies that bear on a question under investigation.

In a professional research context, document review typically proceeds in stages: (1) scoping, where the reviewer defines the question and identifies the universe of relevant materials; (2) collection, which may include treaty texts, UN resolutions, voting records, ministry statements, NGO reports, leaked cables, or academic literature; (3) coding or tagging, where passages are classified by theme, actor, or argument; and (4) synthesis, where findings are integrated into a memo, brief, or position paper.

For Model UN delegates and IR students, document review is the foundation of country-position research. A delegate representing, for example, Brazil on a climate committee would review the country's Nationally Determined Contribution under the Paris Agreement, recent statements by the Itamaraty, voting behavior in past General Assembly resolutions, and relevant domestic legislation.

In legal and think-tank settings, document review is more formalized. Litigators use it during discovery to identify privileged or responsive materials, often with the aid of e-discovery software. Policy researchers apply similar techniques when conducting content analysis—a method that codes documents quantitatively to identify trends in rhetoric or framing.

Good document review distinguishes between:

• Primary sources (treaties, speeches, official communiqués, raw data)
• Secondary sources (analysis, commentary, journalism)
• Tertiary sources (encyclopedias, summaries)

Reviewers should note provenance, date, author, and audience for each document, and remain alert to translation issues, redactions, and selection bias in what has been made public. Triangulation across multiple independent documents strengthens any conclusion drawn from the review.