Never submit a broken citation again.

Every reference verified across six scholarly databases. PDFs found, mismatches flagged, claims checked against the source, before anyone else reads your draft.

See how it works →

Takes about a minute — no account needed.

Trusted by researchers at universities worldwide

Drop your .bib + .tex for a full review

This report becomes yours · no account needed

refs.bib — 42 referencessamplescanned in 38s

Attention Is All You Need

Verified · Crossref + arXiv agree · PDF found

Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition

Year mismatch — you wrote ~~2019~~, the record says 2016

Smith et al., "Large Models and Reasoning"

Not found in any of six databases — likely hallucinated

Prefer to start in the app? Create a free account — 20 references free, reports saved to your projects.

Checked against CrossrefOpenAlexSemantic ScholararXivUnpaywallPubMed

The problem

AI wrote your draft. It may have invented your sources.

Fabricated references look perfect — real author names, correct formatting, plausible venues. They just cite papers that were never written, and a reviewer will find them before you do.

1 in 277

PubMed-indexed papers published in early 2026 cites a reference that doesn't exist — a 12-fold rise in two years.

Columbia DSI, via The Lancet ↗

146,900

hallucinated citations landed in scientific papers in 2025 alone, in an audit of 111 million references.

phys.org ↗

1,400+

court decisions worldwide have dealt with AI-invented citations in filings — with sanctions to match.

AI Hallucination Cases database ↗

What it does

Every check, one clean report.

01

Verify metadata

Every title, author, year and venue cross-checked against Crossref, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar & arXiv. Drift gets flagged with the exact mismatch.
02

Find the PDFs

We search Unpaywall and other open-access sources for the full text, download it straight into your project, and verify it against the citation.
03

Flag the unverifiable

References that can't be confirmed anywhere get a plain-language reason (wrong year, dead DOI, abstract-only, or no trace at all) before a reviewer finds it.
04

Claim-check citations

Optional: confirm the source actually supports what you cited it for, matched against the paper's own full text.
05

Overleaf sync

Connect your Overleaf project and re-check on every draft. No manual export dance.
06

Export clean

Download a corrected .bib, a shareable validity report, or a to-do list of exactly what to fix.

How it works

01Upload

Drop your bibliography

Upload a .bib, paste BibTeX, or connect Overleaf. We parse it in seconds.

02Verify

We cross-examine it

Each reference is resolved across six databases in parallel, PDFs located and identity-verified.

03Fix

You fix what's flagged

A plain-language reason on every issue, one-click fixes, then export a clean file.

The report

See what a scan actually finds.

Every reference gets a verdict and a plain-language reason — never a bare score. Each verdict links to the record we checked it against, so you can confirm it yourself.

chapter-3.bib — 61 referencessample4 issues found

BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers

Verified · Crossref, arXiv and Semantic Scholar agree · PDF found

ImageNet Classification with Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

Venue mismatch — you wrote ~~CVPR 2012~~, the record says NeurIPS 2012

Scaling Laws for Multilingual Retrieval

Dead DOI — the link in your entry resolves to a 404

Chen & Rodriguez, “Emergent Reasoning in Small Models”

Not found in any of six databases — likely hallucinated

Trust

Your manuscript stays yours.

Your files are used only to run your check — never to train models. Anonymous previews use an unguessable access link and are deleted after seven days unless saved to an account.

Every verdict shows its work.

We check against Crossref, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, arXiv, Unpaywall and PubMed — open scholarly records, linked from every verdict. No black box.

FAQ

Questions, answered.

What files can I check?

A .bib on its own is enough. Add your .tex and we'll also claim-check citations against the source text and spot cites your bibliography is missing.

Is the preview really free? Do I need an account?

Yes, and no account. Drop a file and the scan runs immediately; the report becomes yours if you sign up later. Free accounts include 20 references.

What happens to my files?

They're used only to run your check — never to train models. Anyone with an anonymous preview link can view its summary, so keep it private; the preview is deleted after seven days unless saved.

How do you detect a hallucinated citation?

Each reference is resolved against six scholarly databases, matching title, authors, year and venue. One that can't be confirmed anywhere is flagged with the specific reason — wrong year, dead DOI, or no trace at all.

What do you check against?

Crossref, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, arXiv, Unpaywall and PubMed. Every verdict links to the record it was checked against.

How is this different from Zotero or Mendeley?

Those manage your references; we verify them. Bib Check cross-examines every entry against the scholarly record and tells you exactly what's broken, wrong, or invented.