Use this before submitting anything with AI-assisted references. Roughly two to three minutes per citation. For a 40-reference manuscript, budget 80 minutes to two hours.
The steps are ordered so the fastest checks eliminate the most references first.
1. Resolve the DOI
Paste the DOI into doi.org.
- Does not resolve → fabricated. Remove it.
- Resolves to a different paper → corrupted metadata. Correct or remove.
- Resolves correctly → continue to step 2.
Catches roughly two-thirds of AI citation failures. About 10 seconds each.
2. Search the exact title
Put the full title in quotation marks. Search at least two of: Crossref, PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus.
A real paper appears in multiple independent indexes. One that surfaces in a single obscure place and nowhere else needs scrutiny before you trust it.
3. Compare metadata field by field
Not at a glance — field by field, against the database record.
- Author names, and their order
- Journal name
- Year
- Volume and issue
- Page range
Watch for near-miss author names: a real researcher in the right field who was not actually an author on that paper. This is a common pattern and easy to skim past.
4. Confirm the source supports your claim
The step people skip, and the only one that catches misattribution.
Read the abstract at minimum. If you are citing a specific finding or statistic, locate it in the text.
A reference can be entirely real, correctly formatted, and still be wrong support for your sentence. No automated tool currently catches this — it requires reading the source and judging whether it says what you claim it says.
5. Check retraction status
A real, correctly cited paper may still have been retracted. Every check above passes.
- Retraction Watch Database — most complete public record, now integrated into Crossref
- PubMed — retracted articles carry a prominent notice on the record page
- The publisher page itself — read the landing page rather than only confirming the DOI loads
- Zotero — flags retracted items in your library automatically
Do not ask an AI tool whether a paper was retracted. When nine tools were tested on exactly this, the best managed 53% accuracy and three research-specific tools scored zero.
Tools for each step
All of the tools below are free at the level needed for this checklist. None require an account to do the basic check.
| Step | Tool | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Resolve DOI | doi.org | Official DOI resolver. If it fails here, the reference is not real. |
| 2. Find the paper | Crossref Search | Metadata for over 150 million scholarly records across publishers. |
| 2. Find the paper | PubMed | Biomedical and life sciences. Fastest option if your field is covered. |
| 2. Find the paper | Semantic Scholar | Broad multidisciplinary coverage. Useful as a second index. |
| 3. Check metadata | Zotero | Pulls metadata directly from the source, so fields match the record rather than the AI output. |
| 5. Check retraction | Retraction Watch Database | The most complete public retraction record. Integrated into Crossref. |
| 5. Check retraction | Zotero | Flags retracted items already in your library automatically. |
The one step no tool covers
Step 4 — confirming the source actually supports your claim — has no tool. Every option above verifies that a paper exists and that its details are right. None of them read your sentence, read the paper, and judge whether one supports the other.
Scite comes closest by showing whether later papers cited a work supportively or contrastingly, which is useful context. It still does not tell you whether the paper supports your specific claim. Free access is limited.
A note on AI research assistants. Tools like Elicit, Consensus, and SciSpace are built for discovery — finding relevant papers — not verification. Do not use them to confirm a citation is real or unretracted. When nine AI tools were tested on retracted papers, three research-specific tools scored zero. Discovery and verification are different jobs.
What each step catches
| Failure type | Caught by |
|---|---|
| Fabricated reference (invented entirely) | Step 1 |
| Corrupted metadata (wrong year, journal, authors) | Steps 1–3 |
| Misattributed claim (real paper, wrong support) | Step 4 only |
| Retracted paper | Step 5 only |
Three rules worth internalising
- Treat every AI-suggested reference as a lead, not a source.
- A DOI that resolves is not a paper in good standing. It may be retracted, or may not support your claim.
- Automated checking is a first pass, not verification. Tools catch fabrication. They do not catch misattribution.
Free to use, copy, and share. Attribution appreciated but not required. Background and sources: How to Verify AI-Generated Citations Before You Submit.