Citation integrity

A polished citation can still be imaginary.

Generated bibliographies often look convincing even when a title, author, journal or DOI is wrong. Check every item against an external scholarly record before relying on it.

Three outcomes that preserve uncertainty

  1. Verified: the important fields agree.
  2. Possible match: a related record exists but needs review.
  3. Not found: no confident scholarly record was located.

Common citation failures

Invented combinations

A real author and real journal may be combined with a title that was never published.

Metadata drift

The paper exists, but the year, author order, volume, pages or DOI are inaccurate.

Overconfident formatting

Perfect APA formatting does not prove that the source exists. Record verification comes first.

A careful result

No match is reported as no match. AICheck does not turn a weak search result into a verified citation.