Citation evaluation guide
How to check whether a cited passage supports the claim it sits on, and how to count the material claims in an answer that carry no citation at all.
By Marella AI · Updated 23 Oct 2026
Short answer
A citation does not prove an answer correct. Citation correctness asks whether a cited source supports the claim attached to it; citation completeness asks whether the material claims in an answer have adequate citations at all. They are separate measurements and a system can fail either one on its own.
Write the expected evidence and acceptable behaviour before seeing system output.
Do not give an entire paragraph one score when its claims have different support.
For each citation, inspect the source passage, document identity, version and context. Record supported, partially supported, contradicted, irrelevant or inaccessible.
Identify material claims without adequate supporting citations. Separate a missing citation from a cited passage that is itself weak.
Include definitions, tables, footnotes, cross-references, amendments, stale versions and sources that disagree.
Publish counts and rates only when the denominator, scoring rules, evaluator process and failed cases are available.
No. A citation shows where a claim is said to come from. It does not prove the source supports the claim, or that the answer is complete. Check each citation against the passage, document and version it names, then separately count the material claims that carry no citation. A system can fail either test on its own.
Pick a real piece of work, agree what a good answer looks like, then go through the results together.