citation-verification

Citation Verification

Language models (and tired humans) produce references that look right but are not: plausible titles that were never published, real DOIs attached to the wrong paper, wrong years, invented co-authors. Citing a paper that does not exist can lead to desk rejection, a correction, or a misconduct inquiry. This skill makes verification systematic.

Non-negotiable rules

1. Never write a reference from memory. Every entry must come from a retrievable record (Crossref, OpenAlex, arXiv, PubMed, publisher page).
2. A reference is verified only when its identifier resolves to a record whose title, first author and year all match. A resolving DOI alone proves nothing.
3. If you cannot verify a reference, say so. Mark it % UNVERIFIED in the .bib, tell the user, and never quietly keep it.
4. Verify the claim too: open the abstract or the cited section and confirm the paper actually supports the sentence citing it.

Workflow

export CROSSREF_MAILTO=you@university.edu   # polite pool: faster, fewer rate limits
python scripts/verify_citations.py references.bib --json citation-report.json
python scripts/verify_citations.py --doi 10.1038/nature14539 10.1126/science.aaa8415
python scripts/verify_citations.py references.bib --keys smith2020,li2023   # re-check a subset

Each entry gets a status:

Status	Meaning	Action
verified	Identifier resolves; title/author/year agree	None
found-add-doi	No DOI in the entry, but an unambiguous match exists	Add the suggested doi field
mismatch	DOI resolves to a different work, or year/author disagree	Fix from the record, or find the intended paper
doi-not-found	DOI does not resolve anywhere	Typo or fabricated: search by title
uncertain	Title matches but year/author disagree, or only a weak title match	Check manually (reprints, errata, homonymous papers)
not-found	No plausible match in Crossref, OpenAlex or arXiv	Treat as fabricated until proven otherwise (grey literature, theses and reports may legitimately be absent)

Exit code 0 means everything is verified or only missing DOIs; 1 means something needs a human.

Handling the hard cases

• Conference papers without DOIs (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, many CS venues): the script falls back to arXiv. Cite the proceedings version with a url to the official proceedings page, and optionally keep eprint for the arXiv ID.
• Preprint vs published: if both exist, cite the peer-reviewed version unless the venue asks otherwise. OpenAlex links versions of the same work.
• Books and chapters: check ISBN via the publisher or Open Library. Crossref covers many but not all.
• Datasets and software: verify DataCite DOIs (https://api.datacite.org/dois/{doi}) or Zenodo/Software Heritage identifiers.
• Retractions: check each DOI against Retraction Watch data (in Crossref as update-to / relation metadata) and never cite a retracted paper as support.
• Non-English or old literature: absence from these indexes is common. Confirm via library catalogs and document the source.

Reporting to the user

Summarize as a table: key, status, problem, and the fix you applied or propose. Apply only mechanical fixes automatically (adding a DOI for a found-add-doi match). Anything mismatch, uncertain or not-found requires the user's confirmation because only they know which paper they meant to cite.

Related skills

• bibtex-hygiene: duplicates, missing fields, capitalization and formatting in the .bib file.
• citation-management: finding and exporting references from literature databases.
• literature-review: systematic searching and screening.