A word which describes the physical or material evidence provided in conjunction with research? [closed]
There is a very specific word I'm looking for here, not 'materials' or 'evidence.' It should be a noun which refers to physical material given either in a presentation or research paper. It may be Latin, but I'm unsure, and I've only seen it used in an academic setting.
Solution 1:
Personally I'm very fond of specimen
According to the oxford learners dictionaries:
a small amount of something that shows what the rest of it is like SYNONYM sample Astronauts have brought back specimens of rock from the moon. Can you give me a specimen of your handwriting?
a single example of something, especially an animal or a plant The aquarium has some interesting specimens of unusual tropical fish. Redwood trees can live for a long time; one specimen is 4 000 years old. (humorous) They were fine specimens of British youth!
Solution 2:
Research artifacts. Or, just artifacts.
EDIT: As evidence, many computer science publications now have artifact evaluation committees. The USENIX Security Symposium describes the rationale for artifact evaluation like so:
“A scientific paper consists of a constellation of artifacts that extend beyond the document itself: software, hardware, evaluation data and documentation, raw survey results, mechanized proofs, models, test suites, benchmarks, and so on. In some cases, the quality of these artifacts is as important as that of the document itself, yet many of our conferences offer no formal means to submit and evaluate anything but the paper itself. To address this shortcoming, USENIX Security will run for the first time an optional artifact evaluation process, inspired by similar efforts in software engineering and other areas of science.”
Source: https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity20/artifact-evaluation-information
Although this isn't a definition of "artifact", it demonstrates its use. Definitions seem a bit too broad to demonstrate that it is used in this way (any product of humans is an artifact).