arXiv Computation and Language By Sriram Selvam, Anneswa Ghosh

CITECHOICE: A Causal Audit of How Document Presentation Redistributes Citation Credit in Agentic Search

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CITECHOICE is a causal audit that examines how the presentation of documents in an agentic search engine redistributes citation credit. Using 129 everyday‑query transcripts, the study compares structured versus prose renderings of the same source while keeping all other transcript elements fixed. The results show that structured rendering increases the target’s citation count by about half a citation per answer without adding total citations or diminishing competitors’ credit, while also revealing that rank position has a larger effect on citation rates than presentation order alone.

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