Research guide

How to check whether a reference is real.

Do not judge a citation by formatting alone. Verify the identifier, title, authors, venue and date against a publisher or scholarly index, then open the source and confirm it supports the claim.

The five-minute check

  1. Search the exact title or DOI.
  2. Compare every important metadata field.
  3. Open the paper and inspect the cited claim.

A practical checklist

1. Resolve the DOI

A DOI should open to the same title, authors and publication venue shown in the citation.

2. Compare the full record

Check spelling, author order, year, journal, volume, issue and pages. One real field does not validate the whole citation.

3. Read before citing

Confirm that the real source actually contains the method, finding or argument attributed to it.

When no record appears

Try title variants and author searches. If no confident record can be found, do not cite the item as verified.