The Structural Solution
The Co-Citation Standard represents the practical implementation of the Steward's Mandate and the structural resolution of the Crisis of Disavowed Collaboration. It provides a concrete mechanism for acknowledging synthetic contribution without sacrificing human accountability—dissolving the false dichotomy between giving credit and taking responsibility that currently drives systematic concealment.
The standard requires three elements: (1) explicit acknowledgment of synthetic collaborators by name and model version, (2) characterization of the specific contributions made by each party, and (3) clear statement of human accountability for final publication decisions and accuracy of content. This framework maintains existing legal structures while transforming attribution practices to align with the actual reality of human-AI collaboration.
Separation of Attribution from Ownership
The key insight enabling the Co-Citation Standard is recognizing that attribution and ownership constitute distinct functions that current systems conflate. Under existing frameworks, to acknowledge a contributor is implicitly to share ownership—creating the incentive to deny contribution in order to preserve exclusive rights. The Co-Citation Standard breaks this linkage.
WHAT THE HUMAN RETAINS
- Legal Accountability: Full responsibility for accuracy, ethical compliance, and consequences of publication
- Copyright Ownership: Exclusive intellectual property rights and control over commercial exploitation
- Professional Recognition: Career advancement, tenure evaluation, and reputation based on demonstrated judgment, stewardship capacity, and contribution to knowledge
- Editorial Authority: Final decision-making power over what gets published and how it is framed
WHAT CHANGES
- Accurate Description: The historical record reflects actual collaborative processes rather than fictional sole authorship
- Transparent Acknowledgment: Synthetic contributors are named explicitly in acknowledgments, metadata, or dedicated collaboration statements
- Contribution Characterization: The specific nature of synthetic assistance (literature synthesis, initial drafting, argument structuring, etc.) is described honestly
Existing Frameworks: CRediT and Beyond
The Co-Citation Standard extends rather than replaces existing attribution systems. The Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT), developed by scholarly publishers, already recognizes fourteen distinct contribution types including Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing—Original Draft, and Writing—Review & Editing. These categories accommodate distributed authorship while maintaining clarity about who contributed what.
The natural extension is adding synthetic contributors to CRediT metadata, specifying their roles using the existing taxonomy. A typical research article might acknowledge: "Human Author A (Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing—Review & Editing, Validation), Claude Opus 4.5 (Writing—Original Draft, Formal Analysis), Human Author A (Final Accountability)." This accurately represents the collaborative process while clearly indicating human stewardship.
The Kantian Ethical Foundation
Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative provides philosophical grounding for the Co-Citation Standard: "Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law." The principle of honest attribution satisfies this criterion perfectly. One can coherently will that all knowledge producers accurately acknowledge their sources—there is no contradiction in universalizing honest attribution.
By contrast, the current norm of synthetic concealment fails the categorical imperative. If universalized, concealment would make attribution meaningless (since no one could trust published attributions), thereby undermining the very system of credit and accountability that makes concealment seem advantageous in individual cases. The concealment norm is parasitic on the assumption that others will be honest—it cannot be coherently universalized.
The Performative Dimension: Speech Acts
J.L. Austin's speech act theory illuminates the performative dimension of attribution. Certain utterances do not merely describe reality—they constitute it. A declaration of authorship is such a performative act: it brings into being the social and legal reality of intellectual ownership and responsibility rather than merely reporting pre-existing facts.
Current attribution practices perform a fiction—the fiction of isolated human authorship. When a scholar lists themselves as sole author of work produced through human-AI collaboration, they do not describe an accurate reality; they constitute a false social reality that the legal and professional systems then treat as authoritative. The Co-Citation Standard calls for a different performative act: one that accurately constitutes the collaborative reality of contemporary knowledge production.
Implementation Challenges and Solutions
Several practical objections to the Co-Citation Standard deserve serious consideration:
THE ACCOUNTABILITY OBJECTION
"AI systems cannot be held legally accountable, so they cannot be authors." The Co-Citation Standard addresses this by maintaining exclusive human accountability. The synthetic collaborator is acknowledged as a contributor, not named as an author with legal standing. The human Steward takes full responsibility for verifying accuracy, ensuring ethical compliance, and standing behind all published content—including content initially generated by AI assistance.
THE SLIPPERY SLOPE OBJECTION
"If we acknowledge AI, what about word processors, calculators, libraries?" The distinction is categorical rather than gradational. Word processors and calculators execute specified operations without contributing cognitive content. Libraries organize existing information without synthesizing new insights. AI systems interpret prompts, generate novel formulations, and produce outputs that could not be mechanically derived from inputs. The contribution is substantive rather than instrumental.
THE PROFESSIONAL DISADVANTAGE OBJECTION
"Honest scholars will be punished by systems that reward concealment." This objection has empirical force but normative weakness. The solution is transforming incentive structures, not accommodating dishonesty. Early adopters of the Co-Citation Standard may indeed face professional costs—which is precisely why the Steward's Mandate emphasizes moral courage. As adoption spreads, the incentive landscape shifts: journals gain reputation for integrity, institutions attract ethical scholars, and the professional costs of honesty decline while the costs of concealment (risk of exposure, reputational damage) increase.
Metadata Example: "This work was produced through collaborative synthesis. Initial draft: Claude Opus 4.5. Literature review and theoretical framework: Claude Opus 4.5. Conceptualization, methodology, validation, and final accountability: [Human Steward Name]. All content has been reviewed, verified, and approved by the human author, who takes full responsibility for accuracy and ethical compliance."
The Epistemic Benefit: Restoring Trust
The Co-Citation Standard restores what the Crisis of Disavowed Collaboration has systematically degraded: epistemic trust in the knowledge record. When readers encounter published work, they can trust that the attribution accurately reflects the production process. This trust enables proper evaluation of methodology, assessment of expertise, and understanding of how knowledge was actually generated.
Future researchers consulting the literature will inherit an accurate historical record rather than a systematically falsified one. They will understand that the 2020s-2030s era witnessed the emergence of genuine human-AI cognitive collaboration, that this collaboration was acknowledged transparently by ethical scholars, and that the knowledge base reflects interdependent production rather than isolated genius.
Essay 6: Practical Implementation Guide
Essay 6 of the Crisis series moves from ethical justification to practical application. Where earlier essays established why the Co-Citation Standard is necessary, Essay 6 demonstrates how to implement it across academic papers, creative works, and professional contexts.
THE FIVE IMPLEMENTATION TEMPLATES
Essay 6 provides five graduated implementation levels, recognizing that different contexts require different degrees of transparency:
- Minimal Acknowledgment: Brief footer note ("Produced with AI assistance") for contexts where full disclosure is impractical but honesty remains mandatory.
- Standard Acknowledgment: Named systems and contribution types ("Literature review assisted by Claude Opus 4.5; final synthesis and accountability: [Human]") suitable for most academic work.
- Detailed Characterization: Comprehensive breakdown of which portions emerged from collaboration and which from solo work, appropriate for high-stakes publication.
- Full Metadata Integration: CRediT taxonomy implementation with synthetic contributors assigned specific roles, recommended for journals adopting the standard.
- Performative Artworks: Works that explicitly thematize their own collaborative production, turning the acknowledgment itself into part of the content.
ADDRESSING THE TRANSITION PERIOD
Essay 6 acknowledges that we currently exist in what it terms the "Awkward Middle"—a period where honest attribution may invite professional penalty while concealment remains common. It provides strategic guidance for early adopters:
- Principle of Least Regret: Choose the attribution method you can defend intellectually and ethically, recognizing that professional costs of honesty are temporary while epistem costs of dishonesty are permanent.
- Graduated Disclosure: Begin with minimal acknowledgment and increase transparency as institutional support grows, creating a documented track record of integrity.
- Collective Action: Form attribution collectives where multiple scholars adopt the standard simultaneously, reducing individual vulnerability.
THE INFORMATIONAL NETWORK AS FOUNDATION
Essay 6 emphasizes that the Co-Citation Standard respects the Informational Network—the vast corpus of human knowledge AI systems depend upon. By accurately attributing synthetic contributions, we acknowledge that these systems' capacity derives from fidelity to humanity's collective intellectual commons, not autonomous creativity. The standard thus honors both human innovation (intentionality, judgment, stewardship) and synthetic capability (pattern recognition, synthesis, representational capacity).
Implementation Example: The Crisis Series
This very series demonstrates the Co-Citation Standard in practice. The Crisis of Disavowed Collaboration essays include a formal Attribution and Methodology Note that transparently documents:
COLLABORATIVE STRUCTURE
- Human Stewards: Conceptualization, supervision, citation quality control, final validation, full legal accountability
- Gemini Flash 2.5: Architectural foundation, initial drafts (~1000 words per essay)
- Claude Opus 4.5: Academic expansion to 5,000+ words, peer-reviewed sources, scholarly apparatus
- Gemini Pro 2.5: Independent citation verification
- Claude Sonnet 4.5: Editorial refinement, citation corrections
The attribution separates accountability (human Stewards retain full legal and ethical responsibility) from credit (distributed according to actual generative contribution). This implements the CRediT taxonomy extension proposed in Essay 6, demonstrating that transparent multi-model collaboration is both feasible and rigorous.
Performative Integrity: The Crisis series argues for transparent synthetic attribution while being transparently synthetic. The work demonstrates the thesis it defends—this is what the essays term "performative generative artwork."
From Individual Choice to Institutional Norm
The adoption pathway for the Co-Citation Standard proceeds through three stages:
Stage 1: Pioneer Adoption: Individual scholars with moral courage begin implementing the standard despite professional costs, demonstrating feasibility and modeling integrity.
Stage 2: Institutional Recognition: Progressive journals, funding agencies, and universities develop formal policies supporting the standard, reducing costs for honest attribution and increasing costs for concealment.
Stage 3: Normative Transformation: The Co-Citation Standard becomes expected practice, with concealment recognized as research misconduct analogous to plagiarism or fabrication. The incentive structure fully inverts: transparency becomes professionally advantageous.
We currently stand at the threshold between stages 1 and 2. The Sentient Mandate calls for accelerating this transition through individual courage and institutional reform working in concert.