Citations are one of the strongest trust levers for RAG, but many implementations treat citations as decorative links. Structured citations make citations verifiable: each claim is tied to a source ID and a snippet that can be inspected and audited.
What makes a citation "structured"
A structured citation includes:
- Source ID. A stable identifier for the source document.
- Chunk or section ID. Where in the source the evidence came from.
- Snippet. The exact text used as evidence.
- Metadata. Title, owner, effective date, and classification where relevant (see metadata strategy).
Require citations for key claims
Not every sentence needs a citation, but key factual claims should. For high-stakes workflows, refuse to answer if evidence is missing (see citations and grounding).
Use structured outputs to enforce format
To make citations consistent, use schemas that require a list of citations with source IDs and snippets (see structured outputs). This reduces "citation drift" where the model invents sources or mislabels them.
Make citation behaviour testable
Once citations are structured, you can test them:
- Does every required claim have a citation?
- Do citations refer to allowed sources for the user/tenant?
- Do snippets actually contain the cited claim?
Use these as regression checks and synthetic monitoring signals (see testing pyramid and synthetic monitoring).
Connect citations to governance and audits
Structured citations are also governance artefacts. They support evidence packs by showing which sources were used for answers, and they make investigations faster (see evidence pack automation).
Design the UX for verifiability
In UI, structured citations enable predictable patterns: expandable evidence, source summaries, and clear conflict handling. This improves accessibility and trust (see accessibility patterns).
When citations are structured, RAG becomes less about persuasive answers and more about verifiable claims. That is what enterprise users actually need.