About citation-verification
Citation Verification is a skill for checking scholarly references, aimed at researchers maintaining BibTeX bibliographies and validating cited evidence. It checks identifiers, titles, first authors, and years against retrievable records, and verifies that sources support the claims citing them.
Key features
- 01Verify references against retrievable records
- 02Compare identifiers, titles, authors, and years
- 03Check whether papers support cited claims
- 04Report unverified and mismatched entries by status
- 05Run batch or single-entry BibTeX checks
Use cases
- 01Check references before submitting a paper
- 02Find DOI and metadata mismatches
- 03Confirm sources support cited statements
- 04Handle entries with missing or unresolved DOIs
Install
Copy the command and run it in a terminal.
npx skills add https:/After installing, type/citation-verificationin Claude Code to confirm it loaded.
Bundled filesscripts/verify_citations.py
Details
From the project READMECitation 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
- Never write a reference from memory. Every entry must come from a retrievable record (Crossref, OpenAlex, arXiv, PubMed, publisher page).
- 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.
- If you cannot verify a reference, say so. Mark it
% UNVERIFIEDin the.bib, tell the user, and never quietly keep it. - Verify the claim too: open the abstract or the cited section and confirm the paper actually supports the sentence citing it.
Workflow
export [email protected] # 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
urlto the official proceedings page, and optionally keepeprintfor 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/relationmetadata) 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.bibfile.citation-management: finding and exporting references from literature databases.literature-review: systematic searching and screening.