Citation Checker

Paste a bibliography or a single reference and find out whether the papers are real. Ask "are these references real?", "check my bibliography", "verify this citation", "is this DOI correct?" or "has this paper been retracted?".

Citation Checker looks every reference up in Crossref, the DOI system (doi.org) and OpenAlex, which index the scholarly record, and gives each one a clear verdict: found, mismatch or not found.

A mismatch means a real paper exists but the reference gets something wrong, such as a DOI that belongs to another paper or a wrong year or author list; the real record is shown so the error is easy to fix. Not found means nothing matching exists, which for a bibliography entry often points to an invented or garbled citation.

It also reports whether a paper has been retracted, partially retracted, flagged with an expression of concern or corrected, from the notices that publishers and the Retraction Watch database register with Crossref.

It checks up to 10 references at a time. It compares bibliographic details only (title, authors, year, journal, DOI); it does not read papers or judge whether their claims are true. Books, reports, web pages and talks are often missing from the scholarly indexes, so a not found there is a prompt to check by hand, not proof.

It stores nothing about you: answers are cached for up to six hours, and the only lasting record is a daily count of calls per tool.