Checking your reference list means verifying each entry against the source itself, not against your reference manager. Resolve every DOI, confirm the title, authors and year match the record it opens, check the paper has not been retracted, confirm it contains the claim you attribute to it, and reconcile every in-text citation against the list.
What checking your reference list actually means
A verified reference is one whose identifier resolves to a real record, whose metadata matches what you have typed, whose status is not retracted, and which contains the statement you cite it for. All four conditions have to hold. Three out of four is a wrong reference.
A reference manager does none of this. It formats. It reproduces whatever metadata it captured, including metadata captured badly from a PDF. An entry that was wrong when it entered your library is still wrong, and has travelled into every manuscript since.
The six ways a reference fails verification
| Failure | What it looks like | Found by |
|---|---|---|
| Dead identifier | The DOI returns "DOI not found" — a typo, a truncated suffix or a stray full stop | One click |
| Wrong paper | The DOI resolves, but to an article with a different title or different authors | One click |
| Non-existent source | Plausible title, journal and year, no record anywhere — the signature of a fabricated or AI-generated citation | One search |
| Retracted source cited as valid | The landing page carries a retraction notice your sentence does not acknowledge | One click |
| Claim not in the source | The paper is real, but does not report the finding you attribute to it | Reading it |
| Orphan or missing entry | An in-text marker with no list entry, or an entry never cited in the text | Reconciliation |
The seven-pass reference verification routine
Work down the whole list once per pass, rather than running all seven checks on one reference. Passes are faster in columns than rows.
| Pass | What you do | It passes if | If it fails |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Freeze the list | Export the bibliography as plain text and number every entry; work on that copy | Every entry has a stable number | Fix it in the manager and re-export, not in the manuscript |
| 2. Resolve the identifier | Open each DOI as https://doi.org/10.xxxx/yyyy; paste, do not retype | The resolver opens a publisher landing page | Search the exact title in Crossref metadata search; correct or delete it |
| 3. Match the metadata | Compare title, first author, journal, year, volume and pages against the page that opened | Every field matches the landing page | Overwrite your entry from the publisher record, never the reverse |
| 4. Check status | Look for a retraction, correction, erratum or expression of concern; open Crossmark where the publisher provides it | No notice, or you cite it deliberately | Cite the notice alongside the article, or replace it |
| 5. Verify the claim | Open the full text and locate the sentence, table or figure that supports your claim | You can name the page, table or figure | Rewrite your sentence, or find a source that says it |
| 6. Reconcile both ways | Text to list: every marker has an entry. List to text: every entry is cited, tables and legends included | Counts match and no orphans remain | Add, delete, renumber, then run pass 6 again |
| 7. Check names and style | Initials, diacritics, journal abbreviation and ordering against the required style | Formatting is consistent across every entry | Correct in the manager and re-export |
Keep a log as you go: reference number, identifier resolved, metadata matched, claim located.
How to resolve every DOI and confirm it points to the right paper
A DOI is a persistent identifier; for journal articles it is normally registered through Crossref, and any DOI resolves when you prefix it with https://doi.org/ and open it. Paste the string; retyping is how a lowercase l becomes a 1. Breakages to look for: a full stop absorbed from the sentence, a suffix truncated by a line break, a DOI copied from the wrong row of a results page.
Resolution alone is not verification: the landing page is the authority, and your entry is the copy that gets corrected. A DOI that opens the wrong article still looks correct.
References with no DOI are ordinary: older articles, books, chapters, theses and reports often have none. Verify those against the issuing body's own page or a library catalogue record. Datasets, software and code carry their own identifiers — often registered through DataCite rather than Crossref — and their own citation formats; where the required style does not cover them, follow the citation the repository supplies.
How to check whether a reference has been retracted
A retraction is a formal notice that an article should no longer be relied upon; the article should stay online, clearly marked as retracted. COPE publishes retraction guidelines setting out when a retraction is appropriate and how it should be presented, and Crossref carries retraction and correction metadata where the publisher deposits it.
Open the landing page, not your saved PDF: a PDF downloaded in 2022 cannot tell you what happened in 2024. Look for a banner, a watermark, a linked notice or a Crossmark update. The notice is usually registered with its own DOI and is itself citable.
Citing a retracted paper is not automatically an error; citing it as valid evidence is. If the retracted work is part of your argument, say so in the sentence and cite the notice too. What a retraction is and how to avoid one covers the case when the retracted paper is your own.
Why references produced by an AI tool have to be checked one by one
A language model generates text that resembles a citation: credible author pattern, real journal title, plausible year, a DOI in the right shape. A fabricated reference fails at resolution — the one check that requires opening the identifier rather than reading the entry.
Treat any reference from a chatbot or an AI literature-search feature as unverified until it resolves and its metadata matches. The same rule covers references a co-author pasted in and any copied from another paper's list. Disclosure obligations are set out in using AI tools in research writing.
There is no reliable visual tell. Do not try to spot fabricated citations by reading them; resolve them.
How to reconcile in-text citations against the reference list
Reconciliation runs in two directions; running it in one is why errors survive. Text to list: every superscript, bracket or author-year marker needs an entry. List to text: every entry must be cited at least once, including in tables, figure legends and supplementary files.
Do it mechanically: search the manuscript for each marker in turn and tick it off the numbered export from pass 1. Sweep tables and legends separately: markers there sit outside the running text, so a search of the body alone does not reach them. In a numbered style, the highest number cited should equal the number of entries.
Renumbering is where this goes wrong: deleting reference 12 shifts every later number, and numbers typed by hand do not update at all, while field codes renumber only when the document is refreshed, so reconcile last, once the text is final. Numbering rules differ by style, so apply the numbering convention the journal requires.
A worked example: one reference through the routine
Entry 14 in a submitted list reads: Author AB, Author CD. Postoperative outcomes after laparoscopic repair. J Example Surg. 2019;12(3):145-52. doi:10.5555/jes.2019.0145
- Pass 2, resolve the identifier. Opened as https://doi.org/10.5555/jes.2019.0145. It resolves.
- Pass 3, match the metadata. Same title and first author, but the page shows volume 12, issue 4, pages 245-52 — the entry came from a preprint. Overwrite issue and pages.
- Pass 4, check status. The page carries a correction notice with its own DOI, affecting Table 2 — the table the manuscript quotes. Cite the corrected value and the notice.
- Pass 5, verify the claim. The corrected Table 2 reports that outcome for a subgroup, while the manuscript says "in all patients". Rewrite the sentence.
Three defects in one reference, none visible without opening the source.
What to do when a reference will not verify
Remove the reference. A reference you cannot open is a reference you cannot defend. If the point matters, find a source you can verify; if none exists, the sentence is an assertion and should be written as one. Styles differ on personal communications and unpublished data: several treat them as in-text citations, with written permission from the source, rather than as reference-list entries, so check what your style asks for.
Who is responsible for reference accuracy
Reference accuracy is the authors' responsibility. We run similarity screening on submissions and our editorial policies align with COPE Core Practices, but we do not publish a separate reference-verification policy, and no screening tool can confirm that a real paper says what you claim — only pass 5 does that. Our Author Guidelines set out preparation requirements, and Research Integrity covers concerns raised after publication. See also what a DOI is and why every paper needs one and the corresponding author's responsibilities.