Citing Policy Window & persistent identifiers

Part 1 — How to cite Policy Window

Every article's canonical URL at policywindow.org/wiki/[slug] is committed-stable, and ?asOf=YYYY-MM-DD freezes the citation to a specific ArticleRevision snapshot. Cite the snapshot pin, not the bare URL, so the body of text you reference cannot change underneath your citation. The mechanics of how the pin resolves are in Part 2.

Worked examples in four common styles

Policy Window. "EU AI Act." Policy Window AI Governance Catalog, 2026-05-31, https://policywindow.org/wiki/eu-ai-act?asOf=2026-05-31.

Policy Window. (2026). EU AI Act [Snapshot 2026-05-31]. Policy Window AI Governance Catalog. https://policywindow.org/wiki/eu-ai-act?asOf=2026-05-31

Policy Window, "EU AI Act," Policy Window AI Governance Catalog, accessed 2026-05-31, https://policywindow.org/wiki/eu-ai-act?asOf=2026-05-31.

@misc{policywindow_eu_ai_act_20260531,
  author = {{Policy Window}},
  title  = {EU AI Act},
  year   = {2026},
  month  = {05},
  note   = {Snapshot 2026-05-31},
  howpublished = {Policy Window AI Governance Catalog},
  url    = {https://policywindow.org/wiki/eu-ai-act?asOf=2026-05-31}
}

Every article page surfaces a CiteThisWidget that copies these formats (plus RIS, Harvard, OSCOLA, Bluebook) into the clipboard pre-filled with the article's own slug and your current ?asOf= if set. The widget will add DOIs automatically once Zenodo registration lands (Q4 2026; see Part 2 · DOI roadmap).

What we ask citers to include

• The article URL with ?asOf=YYYY-MM-DD snapshot pin. Without the pin, your citation describes a moving target; with it, the read path returns the frozen ArticleRevision captured at-or-before the requested date and renders a "Pinned snapshot" banner so the reader can see the version match.
• The attribution string (verbatim, suitable for AI-assistant attribution boxes or end-of-answer footers):

  Source: Policy Window AI Governance Catalog (https://policywindow.org/wiki). Snapshot: ?asOf=YYYY-MM-DD. CC0 1.0 Universal.

  (The catalog content is CC BY 4.0; the citation graph metadata is CC0 per I4OC — see charter §5.)
• Where applicable, the subject-editor byline. When a catalog row carries a subjectEditorByline (name, affiliation, ORCID, lastReviewed), include the editor name in the citation author field (e.g. Policy Window / [Editor Name]) so accountability tracks to the named human, not just the org.

Tell us you cited us & the machine-readable feed

If you cite Policy Window in a paper, regulatory document, hearing testimony, or coalition submission, please let us know so we can verify and log it at /wiki/influence-tracker (the Submit a citation section). Submissions are append-only, manually curated by the editorial board, and collect no personal data beyond the citing-document URL, the PW URL cited, and the date observed. We do not solicit citations or log social-media mentions, weightless blog posts, or unverifiable claims — only documented references (regulator docs, named-in- legislation, hearing testimony, peer-reviewed papers, civil- society submissions, AI-assistant transcripts). The verification posture and accepted categories are documented in full on that page.

The documented-citation log is also available machine-readable as JSON at /wiki/citing-us/citations.json. The shape is a schema.org/Dataset object with a top-level citations array (each entry: citation URL, citing entity, what was cited, date observed, type), declared CC0 1.0 Universal. Append-only with monotonically non-decreasing timestamps, so a downstream cache can fetch incrementally by dateObserved > lastSeen; corrections produce a successor entry rather than a silent deletion. CORS-open, 5-minute cache. The log starts empty by design and fills as editorial-board curation lands documented external citations.

Why we publish this

CSET Georgetown documents its policy influence through Congressional citations, DoD-workshop participation, and named press coverage; OECD.AI documents adoption of the OECD AI Recommendation across member states. The pattern is the same: documenting documentation of influence is third-party-verifiable— we do not have to self-report "impact" that nobody else can check. A canonical citation convention plus an append-only log gives us the same posture: readers, foundation officers, and peer reviewers can verify our reach without taking our word for it.

Committed-stable URLs + ?asOf= snapshot pinning

Each article's canonical URL at policywindow.org/wiki/[slug] is committed-stable. Slugs do not change after publication; if a topic is renamed, the old slug remains as a 308 redirect and the rename is recorded in /wiki/changelog.

When ?asOf=YYYY-MM-DDis set, the read path queries the ArticleRevision table for the most-recent snapshot captured at-or-before the requested date and renders against that historical state. The green "Pinned snapshot" banner above the title confirms the article body is the frozen historical content. See methodology §6 for the implementation detail.

Archival commitment (if the project ends)

Should Policy Window cease operation, the full catalog and its ?asOf= snapshot history will be archived to a neutral home with the same URL structure preserved as long as is technically feasible. Specific commitments:

• Internet Archive Wayback Machine: we actively request indexing of every article + the catalog JSON / CSV endpoints. The catalog endpoints have been archived since 2026-Q2.
• Source-code mirror: the public GitHub repository contains the full typed catalog data. A self-hoster can reconstruct the wiki from the repo + the ArticleRevision SQL dump.
• Catalog data dumps: /wiki/catalog/json and /wiki/catalog/csv are CORS-open + downloadable. Researchers building secondary analyses are encouraged to archive periodic snapshots locally as a redundancy.
• Zenodo DOIs(once registered Q4 2026) persist independently of Policy Window's operational status — the DOI Foundation is the authoritative resolver and Zenodo guarantees content retention beyond project lifetime.
• 30-day takedown notice: per terms of service §7, we won't suspend the public wiki in a way that breaks ?asOf= citation URLs without a 30-day notice posted on /wiki/changelog.

Comparison vs other persistent-ID standards