The project
About CitationCheck
CitationCheck exists to help people verify whether academic citations correspond to real scholarly records — and to inspect the evidence behind each result.
Why this exists
Fabricated, malformed, and mismatched references have always existed — writing tools that generate plausible-looking citations have simply made them more common. Checking a reference by hand means searching several databases, comparing fields, and knowing where coverage gaps hide. CitationCheck automates the mechanical part of that work and shows its evidence, so the human part — reading and judging the source — gets your full attention.
Who runs it
CitationCheck is built and operated by Kprise, a software company. It runs as a free public-interest tool: no ads, no sale of data, and no paid tier for the core checker. The service queries open scholarly metadata and is inexpensive to operate by design; Kprise covers the costs.
Questions, corrections, or concerns go straight to a monitored inbox: support@citationcheck.org.
What it does — and does not do
It parses citations, resolves identifiers, searches scholarly metadata providers, and compares records field by field, classifying each check into one of five documented states. It does not write essays, detect plagiarism, manage references, score source quality, replace peer review, or determine whether a paper supports a claim. It cannot guarantee that every fabricated citation is caught, and it never treats "not found" as proof of fabrication.
Why it's free
Citation verification is most useful as a routine habit, and habits don't form behind paywalls. The core checker is free, requires no account, and uses no dark patterns — no fake scarcity, no credit counters, no forced registration. If you want to hear when new capabilities ship, there's an optional email list on the homepage; that's the extent of it.
How the methodology is maintained
Matching rules and thresholds live in configuration, are exercised against a fixture suite of representative citations, and change when incorrect-result reports show systematic error. Substantive changes are dated on the methodology page.
Reporting errors
Wrong classification? Email support@citationcheck.org with the citation and, if you have it, the DOI or a link to the correct record. These reports are the primary driver of parser and threshold fixes.
Code and contributions
The code is not currently open source. If a public repository is published, it will be linked here and in the footer with its license.
Check your references before you submit.
Free citation checks with the evidence shown for every result. No account required.
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