Free citation checker
Paste your reference list and check every citation against four scholarly databases in seconds. The checker flags references that point to the wrong paper and ones that no database can find, the fingerprint of a fabricated or AI-hallucinated citation. Free, no account, nothing stored.
Nothing is stored. We check each reference against Crossref, OpenAlex, Europe PMC, and Semantic Scholar. Free, no account.
Why check your citations before you submit
Reviewers and editors increasingly check references, and tools that generate text can invent citations that look perfectly formatted but do not exist. A single fabricated or mis-attributed reference can cost you a desk rejection or, worse, surface after publication. Verifying your bibliography against the databases that actually index the literature takes seconds and removes an avoidable risk.
For more on how fabricated references slip into manuscripts and how to catch them, read detecting hallucinated citations.
Frequently asked questions
How does the citation checker work?
Paste your reference list, a .bib file, or a list of DOIs. The tool parses each reference and searches four scholarly databases (Crossref, OpenAlex, Europe PMC, and Semantic Scholar, together indexing over 250 million works) for a matching record. It reports each reference as verified, a partial match, pointing to the wrong paper, or not found. It runs in seconds and stores nothing.
Can it detect fake or AI-hallucinated citations?
It flags the two clearest signals of a fabricated citation: a DOI that resolves to a different paper than the one cited, and a reference that no scholarly database can match. A reference that matches nothing is the classic fingerprint of an AI-hallucinated citation, though it can also be a book, report, or very recent work. The tool tells you which references to verify by hand rather than guessing for you.
Is the citation checker free?
Yes. It is free, needs no account, and does not store your references. It is built by ManuscriptMind, which offers full AI peer review that reads your whole manuscript and decides which unmatched references are genuinely fabricated, with 5 free reviews and no credit card.
Which citation formats does it accept?
Any reference list pasted one per line in any style (APA, Vancouver, MLA, Chicago), BibTeX .bib files, and plain lists of DOIs. You do not need to reformat your bibliography first.