CiteOwl
CiteOwl

Free citation tools

Each of these asks the registries librarians use, not a chatbot. Check a whole reference list, look up one DOI, or write one reference out in eight styles. There is no account, and nothing you paste is kept.

The tools

If you have a whole reference list and a suspicion, use the checker. If one DOI in a paper is misbehaving, use the lookup. If you have a paper and need it written out in a style, use the generator.

Citation checker

A whole list
  • Every entry looked up in CrossRef and OpenAlex
  • Verified, not found, or matched to a record that disagrees
  • Up to 50 references in one paste
Check a reference list

DOI lookup

One identifier
  • The registered record behind a DOI, in full
  • Title, authors, year and journal from CrossRef
  • A plain answer when the identifier leads nowhere
Look up a DOI

Citation generator

One reference
  • A DOI or a title in, a finished reference out
  • Eight styles: APA, MLA, Chicago, IEEE, Vancouver, Harvard, ISO 690 and Numbered
  • Every field taken from the publisher's record, by the formatter the editor exports with
Format a reference

What they read

CrossRef, where publishers deposit the record behind a DOI, and OpenAlex, an open index of published works that lets a reference with no DOI be checked by title and author. A chatbot has neither inside it, which is why it invents references; these pages ask the registries instead.

Both cover journal articles well and books, theses, conference papers and small regional journals much less well, so not found means the check could not confirm the reference, never that it is fake. Those are the ones to look up by hand, about a minute each. If the list has already been handed in, there is a separate guide for that conversation.

Read next.
How to check if a citation is realThe full manual routine: does the paper exist, are the details right, and does it say what it was cited for.10 min read Why AI makes up citationsThe mechanism behind fabricated references, and why asking the chatbot to check its own work cannot fix it.13 min read How to get ChatGPT to cite real sourcesPrompts and settings that make the references come from pages the model actually read.14 min read How to tell if a journal article is fakePredatory journals, hijacked clones and paper mills, and how to check whether the venue is real scholarship.14 min read

Write the next draft from sources that were checked on the way in.

CiteOwl is an editor whose AI cites only papers it opened, with the quote under each claim.

Start writing