How a Weekly Literature Report Becomes a Research Observatory: Evidence Layers, Lineage, and Bounded Autoresearch in NEP-MIN

This paper presents a theory and architecture for transforming a recurring literature stream into a durable, inspectable, and review-gated research observatory.

Using the NEP-MIN Mining Economics Observatory as a domain case, the paper argues that weekly literature curation can become cumulative research memory when issue packets, paper records, file records, extraction records, evidence claims, repair registers, synthesis memos, autoresearch runs, registry entries, and relay packets are treated as governed objects with explicit identity, status, lineage, and authority.

The article defines an observatory object model, a machine-readable evidence-layer ladder, append-preserving provenance rules, lineage-repair mechanisms, synthesis-governance states, and a bounded-autoresearch framework that permits automation-assisted organization, classification, and comparison while preserving human review and preventing silent canonization or erasure.

The paper does not claim to provide a complete synthesis of mining economics, a completed model inventory, or a production autoresearch implementation. Instead, it establishes the architectural conditions required for longitudinal evidence accumulation and future observatory-scale synthesis.

The package includes the manuscript, transcript-bearing provenance materials, architecture diagrams, metadata records, manifests, and supporting documentation.