citation-tracking

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• SKILL.md

SKILL.md (first lines)

# Citation Tracking

Analyze citation relationships to map the knowledge frontier. The citation graph reveals hidden
connections, missing links between research communities, and shared intellectual heritage.

## Prerequisites

Papers must be ingested (`paper-ingest` skill). For `check-citations`, the local library should have papers with known DOIs for matching.

## Workflow

### Step 1: Basic citation queries

```bash
drbrain citations p3f8a2                    # both refs and citing papers
drbrain citations p3f8a2 --type refs          # only what this paper references
drbrain citations p3f8a2 --type citing         # only papers that cite this one
drbrain citations p3f8a2 --type all --json     # full structured output
```

### Step 2: Shared-reference analysis (frontier signal)

```bash
drbrain citations p3f8a2 --type shared-refs
```

Papers marked `unlinked` share references but don't cite each other. This is a knowledge frontier
signal: two groups working on the same problem, reading the same literature, but unaware of each
other. High `shared_count` with `unlinked` status indicates:
- Parallel discovery worth investigating
- Literature review opportunities that bridge communities
- Potential duplicated effort

### Step 3: Citation verification

Check if in-text citations in writing match papers in the library:

```bash
drbrain check-citations "Smith (2023) proposed a method that Jones et al. (2022) extended."
drbrain check-citations --file draft.txt
```

Output shows matched and unmatched citations. Unmatched ones may exist under a different name
variant or need ingest.

### Step 4: Workspace-scoped analysis

```bash
drbrain citations p3f8a2 --type shared-refs --workspace attention-methods
```

## Examples

**Find unlinked papers that share references (frontier detection):**
```bash
drbrain citations p3f8a2 --type shared-refs --json | jq '.[] | select(.status == "unlinked")'
```

**Verify a draft's citations against the library:**
```bash
drbrain check-citations --file intro-draft.txt
```

## CLI Reference

| Command | What it does |
|---------|--------------|
| `drbrain citations <id>` | Both refs and citing papers |
| `drbrain citations <id> --type refs` | References only |
| `drbrain citations <id> --type citing` | Papers citing this one |
| `drbrain citations <id> --type shared-refs` | Shared-reference frontier signals |
| `drbrain citations <id> -w <ws>` | Workspace-scoped citation analysis |
| `drbrain check-citations "<text>"` | Verify in-text citations |
| `drbrain check-citations --file <path>` | Verify citations in a file |

From UynajGI/drbrain, MIT.

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