Citation Grounding

Citation grounding checks whether cited evidence actually supports the generated claim. A citation is not enough by itself; the linked source must entail or justify the sentence it is attached to.

Represent an answer as claims and citations:

$$y\to \{(c_i,E_i){\}}_{i=1}^n$$

where $c_i$ is a claim and $E_i$ is the cited evidence set. Grounding requires:

$$E_i\models c_i$$

for each claim that needs support.

Citation Roles

Citations can support different roles:

• source of a factual statement;
• evidence for a measurement or metric;
• provenance for a quote or dataset;
• pointer to an implementation artifact;
• background reference for a definition.

The role should match the strength of the claim. A background source should not be used as proof of a new result.

Failure Modes

• Citation points to a relevant source, but not the exact claim.
• Citation supports a weaker claim than the answer states.
• Citation is outdated for a version-sensitive fact.
• Citation is secondary when a primary source is needed.
• Citation appears after a paragraph but supports only one sentence.
• Generated text combines multiple sources into an unsupported inference.

Checks

• Which sentence or claim does each citation support?
• Is the source primary enough for the claim?
• Does the evidence support the exact scope, date, and wording?
• Are inferences marked separately from cited facts?
• Are missing or uncertain facts marked to verify?

Related

• Evidence-grounded generation
• Retrieval-augmented generation
• Hallucination and grounding
• Question answering
• Evidence ledger
• Verification loop