Reference & Citation Checker
Paste a reference list from a manuscript, a thesis or an AI assistant. Each reference is checked against Crossref, PubMed and OpenAlex, and you get a clear verdict for every one: real, real but wrong, retracted, or not a real paper.
| # | Result | Reference and what we found |
|---|
How to use it
- Paste the whole list. Numbered or alphabetical, Vancouver, APA or any mix. BibTeX, RIS and plain DOIs work too. Up to 50 references per run.
- Read the summary. The badges at the top count each outcome. Anything not green needs a look.
- Fix what is flagged. For "real, details wrong" the table lists each field that differs, what you wrote and what the record says.
- Export. Download the report as CSV for your co-authors, or a corrected BibTeX or RIS file for your reference manager.
What each result means
- Verified The paper exists and the details you cited match the record.
- Real, details wrong The paper exists but something is off: the year, an author, the journal, the volume or the pages. The correct values are shown.
- Retracted The paper exists and has been retracted. Remove it, or cite it explicitly as retracted if you are discussing the retraction.
- Likely fabricated The DOI is not registered, or no paper with this title and these authors exists in Crossref, PubMed or OpenAlex. Typical of references invented by AI.
- Not found We could not confirm it either way. Common for books, theses and grey literature.
- Ambiguous Several papers fit what you cited. Add a DOI or more detail to pin it down.
Why reference lists go wrong
Errors in reference lists are older than AI. Audits of published journals have long found that a sizeable fraction of citations contain at least one mistake, usually copied from another paper's reference list rather than from the source. Language models add a new failure: references that look perfect and point at nothing. They borrow real author names and real journal titles, so they pass a quick glance and fail only when someone tries to open them.
Checking by hand means opening every DOI and comparing the details. This tool does that lookup for each line and compares title similarity, author surnames, year, journal, volume and pages, so you only need to look at the ones it flags.
Before you submit
Journals increasingly screen submissions for retracted and non-existent references, and reviewers do open DOIs. A clean run here is a quick way to avoid an embarrassing query. When you are done, the citation generator formats the confirmed references in your journal's style.
Frequently asked questions
How do I check if a citation is real?
Paste it above and press Check references. Each reference is matched against Crossref, PubMed and OpenAlex. "Verified" means we found the paper and its details match; "likely fabricated" means the DOI is not registered or no paper with that title and those authors exists in any of the three databases.
Can it detect references made up by ChatGPT?
Yes, that is what it was built for. Invented references usually have a plausible title, real-sounding authors and a DOI that either does not exist or belongs to a different paper. Both cases are caught: the first as likely fabricated, the second as a mismatch between the DOI record and the title you cited.
Is "not found" the same as fake?
No. Books, book chapters, theses, reports, guidelines and very new papers are often missing from these databases. "Not found" means we could not confirm it either way, so check it by hand. Only "likely fabricated" is a positive finding that the paper does not exist.
How many references can I check?
Up to 50 per run. Anonymous use covers 30 reference checks a day; a free Phở account raises that to 300 a month. If a list is longer than your remaining allowance, the rest are marked "not checked" instead of guessed.
What is in the corrected BibTeX or RIS file?
Every reference we could confirm, with its details taken from the database record rather than from your text. References we could not confirm are left out and counted, so you can fix them by hand. Import the file into Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley or your LaTeX project.
Do you keep my reference list?
No. The list is checked and discarded. Only answers from the public databases are cached, which makes repeat checks faster.