Free tool
Bibliography checker: catch fake and retracted citations
Paste your whole reference list and check every entry at once: retracted papers, DOIs that do not resolve to any real paper, and entries with no DOI at all. Checked against an indexed corpus of 4.6 million papers, with live catalogs as backup. One check per DOI on the single-DOI checker.
Why bibliographies go bad silently
Two failure modes put reference lists at risk. The first is old: papers get retracted after you cite them, and nothing in your files tells you. The second is new: AI writing assistants confidently produce references that look perfect and do not exist. Studies have measured fabrication rates of 30 percent and higher for AI-generated citations, and journals and examiners now actively check for them.
A reference whose DOI resolves to a real, unretracted paper passes both tests. That is exactly what this tool checks, and what CiteDash enforces continuously while you write: every citation is a database object bound to a real paper, so a fabricated reference cannot exist in the first place.
Make this check unnecessary
In CiteDash, citations resolve to real papers by construction, retractions are monitored continuously, and the Fact Checker verifies every AI claim against the paper it cites.
Bibliography checker FAQ
What does 'DOI does not resolve' mean?
The entry carries a DOI that no scholarly catalog recognizes. Real papers virtually always resolve; a made-up DOI is the classic signature of an AI-fabricated citation. Double-check the entry against the original source before submitting.
Why do some entries say 'No DOI found'?
Books, older papers, theses and web sources often have no DOI, so they cannot be checked automatically here. It does not mean the reference is wrong, only that this quick check cannot verify it.
What formats can I paste?
A plain reference list (one entry per line or separated by blank lines), a BibTeX file, or anything containing DOIs. The checker extracts the DOI from each entry and verifies it against an indexed corpus of 4.6 million papers plus live scholarly catalogs.
Is my bibliography stored?
No. Entries are checked and the results returned; the pasted text is not logged or kept. If you email yourself the report, only the summary counts and the flagged entries are included in that email.