Fake Reference Checker - Find Hallucinated & Retracted Papers

Paste a bibliography, a BibTeX file or a list of DOIs. Every reference comes back as found, mismatched (real paper, wrong authors, wrong title or wrong DOI) or not found, and papers that were retracted or have a correction or expression of concern are flagged in the same row. Built for researchers, journal editors, universities and AI literature-review tools that need to catch fabricated citations and withdrawn work before they spread.

Checks run against Crossref (including Retraction Watch data), OpenAlex, DataCite and PubMed. No API key.

Input examples

1. Plain-text reference list

{ "references": "[1] Vaswani, A., et al. (2017). Attention is all you need. NeurIPS.\n[2] Smith, J., & Patel, R. (2022). Neural correlates of quantum memory in transformer hybrid models. Nature Machine Intelligence, 4(3), 211-224." }

2. BibTeX

{ "references": "@article{key, author={Jumper, John and Evans, Richard}, title={Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold}, journal={Nature}, year={2021}, doi={10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2}}" }

3. DOIs only, show only the problems

{ "dois": ["10.1038/nature14539", "10.1016/S0140-6736(97)11096-0"], "onlyProblems": true }

Run with no input to see a demo: a real paper, a retracted paper, an invented paper, a real title with the wrong DOI, and a clean reference.

Input guide

Field	What it does
references	Text, numbered list, or BibTeX. Do not mix BibTeX and plain text in the same box.
dois	A list of DOIs or doi.org links.
checkRetractions	Add retracted / corrected / expression-of-concern flags (default on).
useOpenAlex, usePubMed	Extra indexes tried when Crossref has no match.
contactEmail	Optional; identifies you to Crossref and OpenAlex for faster service.
onlyProblems	Output only references that are not found, mismatched, retracted, or have a year difference.

How a reference is judged

1. If a DOI is present, it is looked up in Crossref, then DataCite (Zenodo, arXiv and data DOIs). A DOI that resolves to a different paper than the one cited is flagged DOI_POINTS_TO_DIFFERENT_PAPER.
2. Otherwise (or if the DOI does not settle it) the reference text is searched in Crossref, then OpenAlex, then PubMed.
3. The best candidate's title must appear in your reference text, its first author must match, and the year must be within one year. Authors or title that differ give MISMATCHED; no plausible candidate gives NOT_FOUND.

Output

Field	Meaning
status	FOUND, MISMATCHED, NOT_FOUND or UNPARSEABLE
flags	RETRACTED, CORRECTED, EXPRESSION_OF_CONCERN, AUTHORS_DIFFER, YEAR_DIFFERS, TITLE_DIFFERS, DOI_NOT_FOUND, DOI_DIFFERS, DOI_POINTS_TO_DIFFERENT_PAPER
retracted, expressionOfConcern, corrected, retractionNotices	Retraction status with the notice DOI and date
matchedTitle, matchedAuthors, matchedYear, matchedDoi, matchedUrl, source	The real paper found
explanation	Plain-English reason

The paper-report row summarises the whole bibliography: counts, suspectRate and a riskLevel.

Sample row:

{ "type": "reference", "index": 2, "status": "FOUND", "flags": ["RETRACTED", "CORRECTED"], "retracted": true,
  "matchedTitle": "RETRACTED: Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children",
  "matchedYear": 1998, "matchedDoi": "10.1016/s0140-6736(97)11096-0", "source": "crossref",
  "retractionNotices": [{ "type": "retraction", "doi": "10.1016/s0140-6736(10)60175-4", "date": "2010-02-06", "source": "retraction-watch" }] }

Use it with

• LLM literature-review tools: pass the model's bibliography here and drop anything that is not FOUND.
• Journal submission checks: run the manuscript's reference list; send MISMATCHED and NOT_FOUND rows to the authors.
• Reading lists and theses: find retracted sources before you cite them.

FAQ

Does NOT_FOUND prove a reference is fake? No. It means none of the four indexes holds a matching paper. Books, theses, reports, conference talks and very recent papers are often missing. Check each one before accusing anyone.

Why FOUND but with YEAR_DIFFERS? The paper exists with the same title and authors, but the cited year is not within a year of the indexed one. Preprint and journal years often differ; large gaps deserve a look.

Does it read PDFs? No. Paste the reference list as text.

Honest limits

• Matching is heuristic: it looks for the indexed title and first author inside your reference text, so badly formatted references can be marked MISMATCHED.
• Retraction data is only as current as Crossref, OpenAlex and PubMed.
• Only the reference is checked, not whether the paper supports the claim it is cited for.

Price

Pay per event: $0.002 per reference checked (reference-checked, charged when a source gave a definite answer) and $0.01 per bibliography report (paper-report). A 60-reference paper costs about $0.13.