Reference verification
Free reference checker for academic citations.
Paste a reference list or upload a paper. SolveUnit Scholar compares titles, authors, years, journals and DOIs with independent scholarly records, while keeping uncertain matches visibly uncertain.
Reviewed by SolveUnit Scholar Research Team on .
From citation text to usable evidence
- Extract ordinary, numbered, BibTeX and RIS references without changing the original text.
- Cross-check Crossref, Semantic Scholar, PubMed, Europe PMC and OpenAlex when available.
- Return confidence, field differences, database evidence and copy-ready citation formats.
What the checker tells you
A real record
A verified result means the core citation metadata agrees with a scholarly record. It is not a judgment about the quality of the paper.
A visible mismatch
Differences in title, first author, year or venue are shown beside the submitted value instead of silently corrected.
A useful next step
Open the publisher record, review the flagged fields and copy APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, GB/T 7714, BibTeX or RIS.
Cases that protect the status logic
These deterministic cases are covered by the reference-verification test suite. No unmeasured accuracy rate is claimed.
Verified
Input: A matching title, year and DOI for the AlphaFold Nature paper.
The DOI identifies the same record and the supplied metadata agrees with it.
Metadata mismatch
Input: A fabricated title attached to the real AlphaFold DOI.
The DOI is real, but the submitted title conflicts with the record. The result must not be promoted to verified.
Possible match
Input: A shortened title-only citation with no identifier.
A plausible record appears, but title coverage does not reach the verification threshold.
Incomplete
Input: No result while only one scholarly database answered.
An upstream outage is not evidence that a citation is fabricated. The result stays incomplete instead of not found.
What this check cannot prove
- The checker evaluates record identity and metadata, not whether a study is methodologically sound.
- A real paper can still be cited beside a claim it does not support.
- Books, theses, older works and regional indexes may require a library catalogue or manual search.
Frequently asked questions
Is the SolveUnit Scholar reference checker free?
Yes. Reference verification is free to use. Paid credits are used for the separate writing explanation workflow.
Which scholarly databases does SolveUnit Scholar check?
SolveUnit Scholar can compare citation metadata with Crossref, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, PubMed and Europe PMC. Coverage varies by publication type and database.
Does “not found” prove that a citation is fake?
No. Older works, books, theses and some non-English publications may have incomplete database coverage. A not-found result should remain unverified and be checked manually.
Can I upload a PDF or document instead of pasting references?
Yes. You can upload a supported document, extract its text and run the reference list through the same verification workflow.
Primary sources
- Crossref: Verify your references
- OpenAlex API documentation
- Semantic Scholar Academic Graph API
- NCBI PubMed developer resources
Private by default
Uploaded documents and extracted text are processed for the requested result and are not stored in the SolveUnit Scholar database.