Sample content for editorial review. Examples are illustrative.
A citation is a promise to the reader
Adding a reference after a paragraph is easy. Making that reference support the paragraph is the real work. For a research assistant, I would separate source discovery, evidence selection, and answer generation. That separation makes it easier to investigate whether a wrong answer came from an unsuitable source, a missed passage, or a claim that exceeded the evidence.
Give every passage a stable identity
Store a document identifier, the publication details you actually have, and a passage location that can be reopened. Keep the original text alongside any cleaned representation used for retrieval. If a processing step removes a table heading or separates a qualifier from its result, the retrieved passage may become misleading even when every word in it is copied accurately.
Retrieve for the question being asked
Different questions need different evidence. A request for a definition is not the same as a comparison of methods or a summary of limitations. Build a small collection of representative questions with expected source passages. Inspect whether retrieval finds relevant material before tuning the answer prompt. Generation cannot repair evidence that never reached the model in the first place.
Check claims against their cited passages
Ask the system to keep statements close to the evidence and acknowledge gaps. Then evaluate whether each important statement is supported by the passage it cites. Check that the citation opens the correct source and location. Review a sample manually, including answers that appear convincing. Presentation errors and unsupported interpretations can survive a check that only looks for a citation marker.
Make corrections part of the workflow
When a reader flags a citation, preserve enough context to reproduce the retrieval and generation steps. Categorize the problem before changing the system. A source update, parsing issue, retrieval miss, and unsupported inference need different fixes. The goal of this illustrative design is not a page covered in references. It is a reader who can check the important claims without repeating the entire research process.
