Why Citations?
Citations create a knowledge graph of AI tools, showing how they relate to and build upon each other. This helps users:
- Discover related tools
- Understand the ecosystem
- Make informed choices about tool combinations
- Track the influence of foundational tools
How Citations Work
When you submit a tool, you can cite other tools in the registry. For example:
- A fine-tuning tool might cite the base model it supports
- A UI framework might cite the underlying ML library
- A pipeline tool might cite the components it orchestrates
Citation Directions
- Outgoing — Tools that your tool uses or builds on
- Incoming — Tools that use or build on your tool
Impact on Scores
Citations directly affect impact scores:
- Each direct citation adds 3 points to the cited tool
- Each indirect citation (two hops away) adds 1 point
Best Practices
- Be specific — Only cite tools your project actually depends on or integrates with
- Add context — Explain the relationship (e.g., "Uses for text embedding")
- Keep it current — Update citations as your tool evolves
- Don't self-cite excessively — Citations should reflect real dependencies
Your Profile
Citations contribute to your public creator profile, including your h-index, i10-index, and total citation count — similar to how Google Scholar tracks academic publications.