citation-discipline

name	citation-discipline
description	Use when adding, verifying or cleaning citations and BibTeX entries in Stage 07 (Writing), when a reference cannot be resolved cleanly from DBLP or CrossRef, when checking that a cited paper actually supports the claim attributed to it, or when filling citation_verification.json.

Citation discipline

Stage 07 must write workspace/artifacts/citation_verification.json, and the gate checks it has a non-empty claim_coverage list where every entry carries a claim and at least one citation_keys or source_ids value. That file is a record of verification, so it is only worth anything if verification happened.

reference.md in this directory is the long-form treatment: source APIs, the full verification workflow, BibTeX field rules, entry templates by publication type, and a troubleshooting table. Read it when a specific reference will not resolve.

The rule that matters most

Never generate a citation from memory.

The dangerous failure is not an obviously fake reference. It is one that looks plausible: real authors with a fabricated title, a real title with the wrong year, a real arXiv ID attached to the wrong venue, a preprint and its published version silently merged into one entry. These survive a read-through and surface during review.

If a citation cannot be verified programmatically or from the run's own workspace/literature/sources.json, mark it unresolved and say so. Do not produce a plausible-looking BibTeX entry to fill the hole.

Verification loop

For each citation:

1. Resolve the work against a source of record — DBLP for CS venues, CrossRef for DOIs, the publisher page, or arXiv for preprints.
2. Match the metadata exactly: authors, title, year, venue. A mismatch in any one of them means you have the wrong record, not a typo to smooth over.
3. Check the claim. Open enough of the paper to confirm it says what you are attributing to it. A correctly-formatted citation for a claim the paper does not make is still a fabricated citation.
4. Record it in citation_verification.json with the claim it supports.

The run already has evidence — use it

workspace/literature/sources.json and claims.json were built in Stage 01 with source IDs. A Stage 07 claim that traces back to a Stage 01 claim should reuse its source_id rather than re-deriving a citation. If a Stage 07 claim has no Stage 01 ancestor, that is worth noticing: it may be a claim the run never gathered evidence for.

BibTeX hygiene

• One entry per work. Prefer the published version; if citing the preprint, cite it as a preprint rather than dressing it as a conference paper.
• Keys are stable and mnemonic (author2024shorttitle), never renumbered.
• Do not leave both a DOI and a conflicting arXiv ID on the same entry.
• Keep entries compatible with the venue's existing template. Do not migrate a working bibliography to BibLaTeX mid-run.

Before you finish the stage

• Every \cite key resolves to an entry in the .bib.
• Every entry in the .bib is cited at least once.
• citation_verification.json covers each substantive claim, not just the easy ones.
• No entry was written from memory. If any was, it is marked unresolved.