Cited by 0scientometrics and bibliometrics researchLibrary Science and InformationWeb visibility and informetrics

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 23 of the 24 references it cites were found in a registry or an index, and 1 are not checked yet; none of the 3 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Unraveling the Ai2 Asta Scholarly Research Assistant Citation System

Open access
Orduña-Malea, Enrique, Lopezosa, Carlos·2025·Revista Panamericana de Comunicación

Abstract

Despite the growing integration of Deep Research tools into academic workflows, empirical evidence on the operation, stability, and potential biases of their citation systems remains scarce. This study addresses this gap by evaluating the intensity, consistency, and bibliographic characteristics of references cited in the literature reports generated by Ai2 Asta, with the aim of understanding how its citation system operates and assessing its implications for scholarly communication. To this end, ten domain-specific queries were submitted to Asta’s Summarise Literature feature, and two independent rounds of data collection were conducted. From each report, in-text citations, cited references, as well as other metrics related to the response process were extracted and examined. The results reveal high citation intensity, with reports integrating numerous in-text citations grounded in retrieved evidence and a diverse yet concentrated set of venues. However, notable instability is observed in the composition of cited references across identical queries, alongside a lack of concordance between retrieved documents and those ultimately cited, suggesting additional opaque selection mechanisms during report generation. These findings indicate that, while Ai2 Asta produces well-structured and quality reports, its instability and opacity in the citation process pose challenges in quantitative science studies due to their lack of reproducibility and transparency. Despite the restricted number of queries and disciplinary scope, the results offer valuable insights for researchers, bibliometricians, developers, and research evaluators seeking to understand, use or regulate AI-based scholarly assistants responsibly.

Checked 2026-11-10 · 1 reference not checked yet

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This study evaluates the citation system of Ai2 Asta’s “Summarise Literature” feature using ten domain-specific queries run in two independent rounds. It finds high citation intensity but substantial instability and opacity: identical queries produce different cited references, and retrieved documents do not reliably match those ultimately cited.

Key findings

  • Citation intensity was high: reports cited a mean of 22.2 references in the first collection and 27.3 in the second, with mean in-text citations of 78.3 and 73.7, respectively; reports ranged from 1,500 to 4,000 words, and passages retrieved averaged 249, near the system maximum of 256.
  • Citation composition was unstable across identical queries: overlap ranged from 34.2% in Query #6 to 95.5% in Query #10; for Query #1, only 4 of the 8 references from the first collection also appeared among the 9 references in the second.
  • Venues were diverse but concentrated: Scientometrics, PLoS One, and arXiv.org together accounted for 29% of cited references in the first collection and 30.8% in the second; 56 of 262 references (21.4%) in the first collection had more than 100 citations, while 28 had none, with comparable figures in the second (57 and 29).
  • There was no relationship between the number of relevant publications retrieved during deep search and the number ultimately cited; in 50% of queries, cited references exceeded retrieved relevant publications, suggesting additional opaque selection during report generation.

Methods

  • Ten queries on topics in quantitative science studies were submitted to Asta’s “Summarise Literature” function, with two independent data collections on October 29 and November 2 using the same configuration, machine, and location.
  • For each query, the authors extracted search duration, number of retrieved documents, field of study, report structure, in-text citations, and cited references in BIB format, including publication name, year, citations received, title, authors, and publication ID.
  • Data were analyzed descriptively in a spreadsheet, with Venn diagrams for citation overlap and Scimago Graphica for figures; contextual data came from the Asta Summary Citation Counts parquet file downloaded October 28 and processed with an ad hoc Python script.

Limitations

  • The paper states a restricted number of queries and disciplinary scope, and notes source-identification limitations: 23 cited references in the first collection and 19 in the second lacked source information, alongside normalization problems such as “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America” versus “Proc.Natl.Acad.Sci.USA.”
  • The paper states that future work should expand queries and disciplines, assess report quality and reference reliability, and conduct longitudinal studies of Asta’s behavior.
  • Evident from the text: the study examines only one tool, only ten queries, and only two rounds, and it does not analyze the separate “Find Papers” functionality; the assigned field of study also changed between collections in four cases, which may affect retrieval.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.21555/rpc.v7i2.3675

Cites

23 of 24 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Figures

Enrique Orduña-Malea Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain The iMetrics Lab https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1989-8477
Enrique Orduña-Malea Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain The iMetrics Lab https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1989-8477CC-BY · From the PDF
Carlos Lopezosa Universitat de Barcelona, Spain Dep. de Biblioteconomia, Doc. i Comunicació Audiovisual https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8619-2194 lopezosa@ub.edu
Carlos Lopezosa Universitat de Barcelona, Spain Dep. de Biblioteconomia, Doc. i Comunicació Audiovisual https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8619-2194 lopezosa@ub.eduCC-BY · From the PDF
Image 3
CC-BY · From the PDF
Figure 1 Venn Diagram of cited references in Ai2 Asta
Figure 1 Venn Diagram of cited references in Ai2 AstaCC-BY · From the PDF
Figure 2 Distribution of publications cited in Ai2 Asta reports per query according to the year of publication
Figure 2 Distribution of publications cited in Ai2 Asta reports per query according to the year of publicationCC-BY · From the PDF
Figure 3 Distribution of publications cited in Ai2 Asta reports per query according to the number of citations received
Figure 3 Distribution of publications cited in Ai2 Asta reports per query according to the number of citations receivedCC-BY · From the PDF
Figure 4 Number of publications cited in Ai2 Asta according to the year of publication
Figure 4 Number of publications cited in Ai2 Asta according to the year of publicationCC-BY · From the PDF
Image 8
CC-BY · From the PDF

Verification

Claims the paper makes

55 Own result · 19 Own interpretation · 3 No basis given · 2 Own method · 1 Sources not found · 1 Check pending · 1 Not checked yet

Verify all 2 references — free account

Show all 54 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 16
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 2
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 12
28 of 28
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Empirical evidence on the operation, stability, and potential biases of citation systems of Deep Research tools remains scarce.

    “Despite the growing integration of Deep Research tools into academic workflows, empirical evidence on the operation, stability, and potential biases of their citation systems remains scarce.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The ten queries are representative of topics in quantitative science studies and suitable for evaluating Ai2 Asta's citation system.

    “The questions relate to topics of broad debate within the field of quantitative science studies and, in some cases, have generated controversy and opposing viewpoints, which may facilitate the creation of comparative tables and interpretive reports.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    This is the first study to date in which the citation system of a deep research tool is analysed from an informetric point of view.

    “constituting the first study to date in which the citation system of a deep research tool is analysed from an informetric point of view.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The literature reports generated by Ai2 Asta are representative of its citation system.

    “This study addresses this gap by evaluating the intensity, consistency, and bibliographic characteristics of references cited in the literature reports generated by Ai2 Asta, with the aim of understanding how its citation system operates and assessing its implications for scholarly communication.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Ai2 Asta performs its deep search process through Semantic Scholar.

    “Ai2 Asta performs the deep search process through Semantic Scholar.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The ten selected queries are representative of Ai2 Asta's citation system behavior more generally.

    “The findings of this study indicate that Ai2 Asta's citation system displays a distinctive combination of high citation intensity, moderate bibliographic diversity, and considerable instability across repeated queries.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The two data collections were conducted under comparable conditions so that differences reflect system instability rather than external factors.

    “The figures are similar in the second data collection, which resulted in 273 cited references from 111 unique sources, 20.7% of which were cited more than once.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The documents retrieved during deep search are a valid baseline for what the system should cite.

    “Moreover, the disconnect between the documents retrieved during deep search and those ultimately cited suggests the presence of additional, opaque selection mechanisms during report generation.”
8 of 8

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

1 of 1

Citations

Cites

Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. Lewis, P., Perez, E., Piktus, A., Petroni, F., Karpukhin, V., Goyal, N., Küttler, H., Lewis, M., Yih, W-T., Rocktäschel, T., Riedel, T., & Kiela, D. (2020). Retrieval-augmented generation for knowledge-intensive NLP tasks. In H. Larochelle and M. Ranzato and R. Hadsell and M.F. Balcan and H. Lin (Eds.). Advances in neural information processing systems (pp. 9459-9474). Curran Associates. https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2020/file/6b493230205f780e1bc26945df7481e5-Paper.pdf
  2. Rane, N.L., Tawde, A., Choudhary, S.P., & Rane, J. (2023). Contribution and performance of ChatGPT and other Large Language Models (LLM) for scientific and research advancements: a double-edged sword. International Research Journal of Modernization in Engineering Technology and Science, 5(10), 875-899. https://doi.org/10.56726/IRJMETS45312; https://goo.su/gvScINu · DOI

Cited by

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Metadata

Authors
Orduña-Malea, E., & Lopezosa, C.
Affiliations
Universitat de Barcelona (ES)
Venue
Revista Panamericana de Comunicación
Published
2025-12-24
Volume
7
Issue
2
ISSN
2683-2208 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W4417078087
Cited by
0
References
23
FWCI
0.00
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Revista Panamericana de Comunicación (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • RiuNet (Universitat Politècnica de València) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (cc-by)
Funders
  • European Regional Development Fund (MCIN/AEI/10)
  • Agencia Estatal de Investigación (13039, MCIN / AEI/10, 10.13039, AEI/10)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
  • Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Library Science and Information
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Web visibility and informetrics
Keywords
AI research assistant, citation systems, reproducibility, transparency, in-text citations

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-11-10, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-11-10 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

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