Funding and conflict-of-interest declaration

homeopathy.software is funded entirely by Similia, the clinical repertory operating at similia.io. That disclosure is not a colophon paragraph: it repeats in the footer of every page, in the byline strip of every comparison, and on this page in plain prose. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission's 2023 Endorsement Guides classify a publisher-product relationship of this kind as a material connection requiring clear and conspicuous disclosure [1]. The NewsGuard transparency criteria, used by institutional buyers to rate news and information sites, require both ownership disclosure and a published correction policy as separate, named criteria, and both are present here [2].

Who pays for this site

Similia pays for the domain registration, hosting on Cloudflare Pages and a single managed Postgres instance, the editorial honoraria on the four-byline roster, the external advisor's stipend, and the data licences underlying the materia-medica corpus. The 2026 operating budget is single-digit-thousand US dollars per month, reconciled quarterly against the editorial-board ledger. The site carries zero third-party display advertising, zero affiliate links, zero paid placement in any comparison, and zero sponsored guest posts; reader donations and grant income are also zero as of the publication date above. Two cost lines — the advisor stipend and the credential-verification fees — are paid out of an editorial-board sub-budget rather than Similia's marketing budget, to keep the line of payment off the product team's books.

How the editorial firewall works in practice

A firewall that exists only on paper is the failure mode named by ProPublica's foundation-funding policy memo: a sponsor reviews drafts "for accuracy," and accuracy review becomes editorial review by attrition [3]. Three rules keep the firewall load-bearing. Rules-first, every comparison page publishes its scoring rubric above the verdict, and the rubric is rank-ordered before any vendor is scored; when a competitor wins on the published rubric, the competitor wins the recommendation. Second, the funder receives no pre-publication review of any page — copy merges into main after editorial sign-off, and Similia learns the verdict when the reader does. Third, corrections and retractions are logged on /about/corrections-log/ against the byline that signed the original piece, never re-attributed and never quietly amended.

Editorial firewall compared with three adjacent funding models

Whether a funded publication can recommend a competitor is the dimension worth examining most closely. A funded publication that cannot point to a published case where it recommended against its sponsor is asking the reader to trust a promise. The published rubric is the receipt: a competitor that scores higher than Similia on the rubric is recommended above Similia, on the same page, in the same voice, with the same funding line at the foot.

The external advisor and quarterly audit

Once per quarter the external advisor reviews three artefacts: the rubric used on every /alternatives/ page published that quarter, every recommendation change relative to the prior quarter, and the corrections log. The advisor's review notes, sign-off date, and the list of pages reviewed are published on this page within fourteen days of each quarterly close. The advisor's seat is filled by appointment of the editorial board and excludes anyone holding equity in, employment by, or paid consulting work for Similia or a directly competing product within the prior twenty-four months — a window borrowed from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' conflict-of-interest disclosure standard for medical-journal authors [5]. Twenty-four months is the shortest lookback that captures recent vendor relationships without shrinking the credentialed-reviewer pool to zero.

What this means for product coverage and for the reader

The site recommends Similia where the rubric supports it and recommends competitors — RadarOpus, Complete Dynamics, MacRepertory, ReferenceWorks, Vithoulkas Compass, and others — where the rubric supports them; either way, the disclosure at the foot of every page is identical. A practitioner reader evaluating tools can follow the comparisons for ranked verdicts, the editorial process for the workflow, and the corrections log for the public record of mistakes. A reader who has read the rubric and wants to evaluate the funder's product directly can take the fourteen-day Similia Pro trial, which carries no payment-method requirement at signup.

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References

[1] U.S. Federal Trade Commission (2023) Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, 16 CFR Part 255, sections 255.5 and 255.0(f), on disclosure of material connections between endorsers and the products they discuss.

[2] NewsGuard Technologies (2024) Rating Process and Criteria, criteria 6 and 7 (ownership and financing disclosure; clearly labels advertising), published at newsguardtech.com/ratings/rating-process-criteria/.

[3] Tofel, R. J. (2010) Issues Around Foundation Funding for Journalism, ProPublica policy memorandum, on the attrition pathway from accuracy review to editorial review under foundation funding.

[4] Consumer Reports (2024) Annual Report and IRS Form 990, on the reader-funded magazine model and its no-advertising policy continuously in force since the organisation's founding in 1936.

[5] International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (2024) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, Section II.B on author responsibilities and conflict-of-interest disclosure.