Editorial policy

Who writes these guides

The guides on this site are published by the CiteDash editorial team and attributed to CiteDash as an organisation, not to invented individual authors. Where a guide is written or reviewed by a named person with relevant expertise, that person is credited by name on the article and in its structured data. Where no name appears, the organisation is the author of record and is accountable for the content.

We would rather carry an honest organisational byline than manufacture a credential. If you want to know who stands behind a claim, it is us, at the address below.

How a guide is produced

Drafting is AI-assisted. Every guide is generated, then edited and checked against the product and the sources before it is published. We are explicit about this for the same reason we ask users to disclose their own AI use: the method does not undermine the work, concealing it would.

The checking is the part that matters. Each draft is reviewed against the rules below, and a draft that fails one is fixed or dropped rather than published with a caveat. Some of this is automated, including a house style check and a test that keeps quoted plan prices in step with the live pricing table; the judgement calls are human, and the responsibility for them is ours either way.

What we will not publish

• Invented numbers. No statistic, percentage, user count, accuracy rate or study result appears in a guide unless it comes from a source we can point at. We do not estimate a number and round it into a claim.
• Fabricated social proof. No invented testimonials, reviews, customer names or institutional endorsements. If a quote is not real, it does not run.
• Product claims that outrun the product. Every description of what CiteDash does must match shipped behaviour at the time of writing. When a feature changes, the guides that describe it change in the same release.
• Specific claims about competitors. Our comparison pages describe what CiteDash does and characterise other tools only in broad, checkable terms. We do not publish their pricing, their accuracy figures or their internals, because those change without notice and we cannot verify them.
• Citations that do not resolve. The rule the product is built on applies to our own writing: a reference that does not point at a real, retrievable work is not a reference.

Dates, updates and corrections

Each guide shows the date it was published and, once it has been substantively revised, the date of that revision. Those dates are real. We do not backdate an article to make a library look older, and we do not refresh a date without changing the content.

If you find an error, tell us and we will correct it. Substantive corrections update the revision date on the article so you can see the piece has moved.

Where the product ends and advice begins

These guides explain research and writing practice, and they describe how CiteDash supports it. They are not a substitute for your institution’s regulations. Where a guide describes what examiners typically expect, read it as the common case and let your handbook govern: conventions differ by discipline, by country and by department, and the rules your department publishes are the ones you are marked against.