Reference checker

Chatbots write references the way they write everything else, by predicting text that looks right. You can get a real author who works in the field, a real journal, a likely year, and a title that was never published.

Some errors are harder to spot. The paper exists, but the year is wrong, an author is missing, or the DOI belongs to another article. A quick search finds something close, so the reference looks fine at a glance.

People make the same mistakes without AI. A reference copied from someone else's list, typed from memory, or exported from a citation manager with bad metadata can carry wrong details too.

1. Search for the exact title in quotation marks in Google Scholar or your library's search.
2. If the reference has a DOI, add it to the end of https://doi.org/ and open the link. It should lead to the article you cited, with the same title and authors.
3. Compare the authors, year, journal, volume and pages with the record you find. Fix any detail that differs.
4. For a book, search your library catalogue or WorldCat by title or ISBN.
5. If you still can't find it, ask a librarian. They can search subscription databases that a web search won't show you.

Each entry gets one of four results. The checker only reports whether it found a matching published record, so none of the results says a reference is fake.

Verified

A published record matches this reference.

Found, with mismatches

A published record matches the title, but some details differ from what you cited.

DOI does not resolve

The DOI in this reference points to no record. Check the DOI or find the source another way.

No matching record found

We could not confirm this reference, which is not the same as it not existing. Books, grey literature such as reports and theses, web pages, and very recent work are often missing from these indexes.

If you want to check citations before you hand in an essay, paste the reference list they point to. For each entry, the checker looks for the published work in Crossref and OpenAlex. It compares the title, year, first author and DOI in your entry with the published record, and when it finds the work, it tells you if the year, first author or DOI differ.

It doesn't check formatting. Punctuation, italics, capital letters, the order of the parts and whether the entry follows APA, MLA or Chicago are not looked at. It also doesn't check your in-text citations against the list.

To format a reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, AMA, IEEE or Harvard, use the citation generator.

Is the reference checker free?

Yes. You don't need an account. If you send a lot of checks in a few minutes, the tool asks you to wait a moment before the next one.

Do you store the references I paste?

No. Your list goes to our server, which looks up each entry in Crossref and OpenAlex and sends the results back to your browser. We don't save the text or the results.

Does "No matching record found" mean a reference is fake?

No. Crossref and OpenAlex cover journal articles well, but many books, reports, theses, web pages and very recent papers are missing from them. Check that entry by hand before you decide anything about it.

Which citation styles does it accept?

APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard and numbered lists. The checker reads each entry as written, so you don't need to reformat anything. Put each reference on its own line or leave a blank line between them.

Can teachers use it on a student's reference list?

Yes. Paste the list the same way. An entry with no matching record is worth a closer look. The indexes have gaps, so that result on its own does not show misconduct.

Does the checker use AI?

No. It doesn't use a language model. It compares the title, year, first author and DOI in each entry with the published record, using fixed rules.

Can I use it as a citation checker?

Yes, for whether each cited work exists and whether its details are right. It checks the title, year, first author and DOI of each entry in your reference list against the published record. It doesn't check formatting or your in-text citations.

Does it check APA, MLA or Chicago formatting?

No. It doesn't look at punctuation, italics, capitals or the order of the parts. To format a reference in one of those styles, use the free citation generator.

Will it correct my references?

No. It shows what it found and links to the matching record, so you can correct the reference yourself.