TimelyScholarFree Tools › Reference Checker
Paste your reference list to check each reference against Crossref: confirm DOIs point to the right article, flag mismatched authors, titles and years, suggest missing DOIs and find retractions and corrections.
FreeNo account neededReferences are checked against Crossref
References are sent to the Crossref public API to look them up; nothing else is stored. Retractions, corrections and expressions of concern are found through Crossref update notices, which include Retraction Watch data. A clean result does not prove a reference is correct: check formatting against your style guide.
One per line or separated by blank lines, up to 50 at a time.
Each reference is looked up in Crossref in turn.
Red for retractions and update notices, amber for details to check.
Errors in references, such as a wrong DOI, year or author, make sources hard to find and can undermine a manuscript during peer review. Citing a retracted article without acknowledging the retraction is a more serious problem.
Crossref records DOIs for most journal articles and links retraction notices, corrections and expressions of concern to the original articles, including data from the Retraction Watch database.
No. The checker verifies the details against Crossref; it does not check the style. Use the citation generator for formatting.
Some DOIs are registered with other agencies, such as DataCite for datasets, and are not in Crossref.