Retrieval happens before generation

When you ask a question, CiteWard doesn't start by writing an answer. It starts by searching — PubMed, Europe PMC, ClinicalTrials.gov, FDA drug labels, WHO guidance, CPIC gene-drug pairs, and OpenAlex for broader scholarly coverage. That happens on every question, live, not from a snapshot baked in months ago.

What comes back gets ranked — not every retrieved document is equally useful, and a document appearing in results isn't treated as proof it supports the eventual answer. Relevance, source authority, and how directly a passage addresses the actual question all factor into what makes it into the final context the answer gets written from.

Currency matters too: when a newer authoritative source and an older one disagree, that's weighed, not silently averaged. See our sources for the full list of what gets queried, and the methodology page for what happens after retrieval.