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Cite XWhy and SMILE

Cite the software artefact you used and the research method that supports your analysis. These are related but distinct citations.

Citation decision table

What you used or discussed Recommended research citation
General SMILE method, local statistical weighting, or classifier explanations Foundational SMILE paper
Point-cloud explanations Foundational SMILE paper + point-cloud SMILE preprint
Instruction-based image-editing explanations Foundational SMILE paper + image-editing SMILE preprint
Large-language-model prompt explanations Foundational SMILE paper + gSMILE preprint
Knowledge-graph or GraphRAG explanations Foundational SMILE paper + KG-SMILE preprint
Concept-based explanation auditing Foundational SMILE paper + ConceptSMILE preprint
Financial-sentiment reasoning with local perturbation explanations gSMILE preprint + financial-sentiment study
The consolidated MSc study of generative-AI explainability MSc thesis; add the relevant method paper where applicable

Foundational SMILE citation

Use this as the primary methodological citation when referring to SMILE generally:

Koorosh Aslansefat, Mojgan Hashemian, Martin Walker, Mohammed Naveed Akram, Ioannis Sorokos, and Yiannis Papadopoulos. “Explaining Black Boxes with a SMILE: Statistical Model-Agnostic Interpretability with Local Explanations.” IEEE Software, 41(1), 87–97, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1109/MS.2023.3321282

@article{aslansefat2024smile,
  author    = {Koorosh Aslansefat and Mojgan Hashemian and Martin Walker
               and Mohammed Naveed Akram and Ioannis Sorokos
               and Yiannis Papadopoulos},
  title     = {Explaining Black Boxes with a {SMILE}: Statistical
               Model-Agnostic Interpretability with Local Explanations},
  journal   = {IEEE Software},
  year      = {2024},
  volume    = {41},
  number    = {1},
  pages     = {87--97},
  month     = {Jan.--Feb.},
  publisher = {IEEE},
  doi       = {10.1109/MS.2023.3321282},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1109/MS.2023.3321282}
}

Modality-specific citations

Point clouds

Cite the foundational SMILE paper and:

Seyed Mohammad Ahmadi, Koorosh Aslansefat, Rubén Valcarce-Diñeiro, and Joshua Barnfather. “Explainability of Point Cloud Neural Networks Using SMILE: Statistical Model-Agnostic Interpretability with Local Explanations.” arXiv:2410.15374, 2024. https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.15374

Instruction-based image editing

Cite the foundational SMILE paper and:

Zeinab Dehghani, Koorosh Aslansefat, Adil Khan, Adín Ramírez Rivera, Franky George, and Muhammad Khalid. “Mapping the Mind of an Instruction-Based Image Editing Using SMILE.” arXiv:2412.16277, 2024. https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.16277

Large language models

Cite the foundational SMILE paper and:

Zeinab Dehghani, Mohammed Naveed Akram, Koorosh Aslansefat, Adil Khan, and Yiannis Papadopoulos. “Explaining Large Language Models with gSMILE.” arXiv:2505.21657, 2025. https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.21657

Knowledge-graph retrieval-augmented generation

Cite the foundational SMILE paper and:

Zahra Zehtabi Sabeti Moghaddam, Zeinab Dehghani, Maneeha Rani, Koorosh Aslansefat, Bhupesh Kumar Mishra, Rameez Raja Kureshi, and Dhavalkumar Thakker. “Explainable Knowledge Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation (KG-RAG) with KG-SMILE.” arXiv:2509.03626, 2025. https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.03626

Concept-based explainability

Cite the foundational SMILE paper and:

Mohadeseh Mollapour, Koorosh Aslansefat, Zeinab Dehghani, Bhupesh Kumar Mishra, Tejal Shah, and Zhibao Mian. “ConceptSMILE: Auditing the Trustworthiness of Concept-Based Explainable AI.” arXiv:2607.09649, 2026. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.09649

Financial-sentiment reasoning

For the applied financial-sentiment study, cite gSMILE and:

Sania Verma, Koorosh Aslansefat, Joyjit Chatterjee, Akash Marar, Anu Mehra, and Aisha Ekundayo. “When Words Move Markets: Interpretable Behavioural and Robustness Analysis of LLMs for Financial Sentiment Reasoning via Local Perturbation Explanations.” In Natural Language Processing and Information Systems: NLDB 2026, LNCS 16696, 271–286. Springer, 2027; first published online 4 July 2026. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-29532-3_19

The publication catalogue provides complete BibTeX records for every method and study.

Citing the XWhy software

A research-method citation does not identify the exact software revision used in an experiment. Until the repository provides a versioned archived software release and formal software DOI, record:

  • the package version;
  • the Git commit SHA when reproducibility is important;
  • the repository URL;
  • the date on which the software was accessed;
  • the configuration, model, data, and random seed used.

A temporary plain-text software reference can use this form:

XWhy contributors. XWhy: Model-Agnostic Explainability with SMILE. Version or commit used. GitHub repository: https://github.com/Dependable-Intelligent-Systems-Lab/xwhy. Accessed YYYY-MM-DD.

Citation principles

  1. Cite the foundational method when the work depends on SMILE’s statistical local-surrogate formulation.
  2. Add the relevant extension when the explained system is a point cloud, image editor, LLM, KG-RAG pipeline, or concept-based model.
  3. Distinguish preprints from peer-reviewed publications in prose and bibliographies.
  4. List the thesis separately from journal and conference papers.
  5. Record the software revision independently from the paper citation so an experiment can be reproduced.