Citation Source and Traceability for Iron Ore Financial Report Analysis

Iron ore-related data includes types such as spot prices, port inventories, industry production capacity, and listed mining company financial reports.

What data for this category looks like

Iron ore-related data includes types such as spot prices, port inventories, industry production capacity, and listed mining company financial reports. Data sources cover global commodity exchanges, domestic steel industry associations, official announcements from mining enterprises, and other channels. Spot price data updates daily, port inventory data updates weekly, industry monthly reports and corporate financial reports are released quarterly and annually. Document formats include PDF industry reports, CSV spot trading data, Excel inventory statistics tables, and some data sources provide API interfaces. Data fields include origin, iron content grade, transaction unit price, total inventory, and others. Unit prices are mostly quoted in USD/dry ton, while inventory and production capacity units are mostly 10,000 tons.

The multi-source nature, varied update frequencies, and specialized field characteristics of iron ore data create multiple constraints for the citation and traceability process. First, credibility varies across different data sources, so priority differentiation is needed to ensure the authority of cited content. Second, different data has different update frequencies, so differentiated time limits must be set for different types of data such as spot prices and financial reports to avoid citing expired content. Third, there are many specialized fields and terms, so precise matching rules must be configured to avoid retrieving irrelevant steel category data. Finally, the issuing organization and release time of the data source must be fully extracted and displayed to meet the compliance traceability requirements of financial report analysis.

How to set the configuration

Configuration ItemRecommended ValueRationale
Recall countTop 8 entriesIron ore data sources are scattered, requiring coverage across commodity exchanges, industry associations, corporate financial reports and other data types. 8 entries balance retrieval completeness and result redundancy
Similarity threshold0.72There are many specialized terms for iron ore. A threshold that is too low will easily retrieve irrelevant steel category data, while a threshold that is too high will miss valid segmented data
Metadata Extraction Timeout45 secondsMetadata extraction for some large financial report PDF documents takes a long time. 45 seconds covers most scenarios
Citation Time Validity LimitSpot data ≤ 24 hours, financial report data ≤ 90 daysIron ore spot prices fluctuate frequently, and financial report data needs to remain valid within the quarter
Data Source Weight ConfigurationExchange data weight 1.2, industry association data weight 1.0, self-media data weight 0.6Credibility varies across different data sources. Matching weights can improve the citation priority of high-value data sources
Citation Format Template【Source: {source_org}, Publish Time: {publish_time}】Clearly mark the source organization and release time, which meets the traceability requirements of financial report analysis

The parameter values provided on this page are common starting points for configuration. Actual values are affected by material form, data volume and business rules. Specific issues require specific analysis. It is recommended to test on your own samples before finalizing.

Three Common Mistakes

  • Symptom: Calling the RAG interface returns a 200 status code, but the response field content is empty. Cause: The Citation Time Validity Limit configuration is not set, and expired iron ore data beyond the time limit is retrieved, resulting in content being filtered.
  • Symptom: Garbled characters appear in the citation section of the generated analysis content, and the source display format is chaotic. Cause: The metadata extraction function is not enabled, the issuing organization and time information of the data source is not correctly extracted, and the standardized Citation Format Template is not configured.
  • Symptom: The cited iron ore data source is not displayed in the generated financial report analysis body. Cause: The citation source display switch is not enabled, or the configured Citation Format Template does not correctly bind the metadata fields.

How to Confirm the Configuration is Correct

  • Initiate a test call, check whether the source_org and publish_time fields are included in the response results to confirm that metadata extraction is normal.
  • Check the number of retrieved results, confirm that it matches the configured Recall count, and covers multiple types of iron ore data sources such as exchanges and industry associations.
  • Verify that the citation format conforms to the configured Citation Format Template, and check that the source organization and release time are marked.
  • Simulate an expired data retrieval test to confirm that iron ore data beyond the time limit is not retrieved.

Question material comes from public community discussions. Configuration values are common starting points and should be measured against your own samples. Verified on 2026-09-14.