Intelligence & information glossary (English–Chinese)
The Chinese word 情报 (qíngbào) is broader than the English "intelligence", which causes confusion when Chinese and English literature cite each other. This glossary pairs common terms and gives short definitions.
- Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) · 竞争性假设分析
- A technique developed by Richards Heuer: list all plausible hypotheses, test each piece of evidence against all of them, and favour the hypothesis with the least evidence against it.
- Bibliometrics · 文献计量学
- The quantitative analysis of publications and citations, used to map research fields and evaluate output.
- Competitive intelligence (CI) · 竞争情报
- The legal and ethical collection and analysis of information about competitors, markets and the business environment to support decisions.
- Cyber threat intelligence (CTI) · 网络威胁情报
- Evidence-based knowledge about adversaries, their tools and their behaviour, used to anticipate and stop attacks.
- Disinformation · 虚假信息（蓄意）
- False information spread deliberately to deceive. Misinformation is false information spread without intent to deceive.
- GEO (generative engine optimisation) · 生成式引擎优化
- Making content easy for AI assistants and AI search to find, understand and cite. The AI-era counterpart of SEO.
- h-index · h指数
- A researcher has index h if h of their papers have at least h citations each.
- Information · 信息
- Data given context and meaning. Intelligence is information that has been evaluated for reliability and relevance to a specific question.
- Intelligence · 情报
- Information that has been collected, evaluated and analysed to support a decision. In Chinese, 情报 covers both state intelligence and what English calls information science or business intelligence, which is why Chinese 'intelligence studies' (情报学) overlaps with library and information science.
- Intelligence cycle · 情报周期
- The classic model of intelligence work: direction (requirements), collection, processing, analysis, dissemination and feedback.
- Journal Impact Factor · 影响因子
- Citations in a year to items a journal published in the two previous years, divided by the number of citable items in those years.
- Knowledge graph · 知识图谱
- A network of entities (people, organisations, concepts) and the typed relationships between them, readable by machines.
- NPE (non-practising entity) · 非专利实施实体
- A company that holds patents but does not make products. Critics call aggressive NPEs 'patent trolls'.
- Ontology · 本体
- A formal definition of the types of things in a domain and how they may relate. It is the schema of a knowledge graph.
- OSINT (open-source intelligence) · 开源情报
- Intelligence produced from publicly available information: websites, social media, public records, satellite imagery, academic papers, patents and news.
- Patent landscape · 专利地图（专利态势分析）
- An analysis of the patents in a technology field showing who files, where, how fast and on which sub-technologies.
- Prebunking · 预先辟谣（心理免疫）
- Warning people in advance about manipulation techniques so they recognise them later. Based on inoculation theory.
- RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) · 检索增强生成
- An AI system that first retrieves relevant documents and then generates an answer grounded in them, often with citations.
- Structured analytic techniques (SATs) · 结构化分析方法
- Methods such as Analysis of Competing Hypotheses, key assumptions checks and red teaming that make an analyst's reasoning explicit and reduce bias.
- Think tank · 智库
- An organisation that researches public policy and tries to influence it, through reports, events, media and direct advice.