Citation Policy

Primary sources first

Where practical, factual and technical claims should cite the primary publication, official documentation, dataset, standard, or original record rather than relying on tertiary summaries. Secondary scholarship remains appropriate when the secondary analysis itself is relevant.

Fiction and cultural sources

A film, novel, television episode, or other fictional work may be cited as the source of a conceptual case. The citation supports what the fictional work depicts; it does not make the depicted event evidence about real artificial systems.

Model outputs

When model output is itself evidence, the research record should preserve enough provenance to identify the system and reconstruct the interaction as far as practical.

• model/provider identifier;
• model or runtime version where available;
• date/time or run identifier;
• relevant inference parameters;
• exact prompt/stimulus;
• raw output before interpretive rewriting;
• protocol or experiment identifier.

Xenopsychology publications

Working papers should expose stable canonical URLs and citation exports where available. Citations should use the version or revision appropriate to the claim being discussed rather than silently treating every revision as identical.

AI-generated sources

A generated answer is not a substitute for a primary source simply because it sounds authoritative. When an AI system points to an external source, that source should be verified directly before it is cited as evidence.