Citation Verification Reference Guide

A reference guide for citation verification in academic paper writing, providing verification principles and best practices.

Core Principle: Proactively verify every citation during the writing process using programmatic or canonical scholarly sources first: arXiv, DOI/CrossRef, Semantic Scholar, publisher landing pages, and Zotero metadata. Google Scholar is useful for manual discovery, but it is not the canonical verification authority.

Core Problems

Citation issues in academic papers seriously impact research integrity:

1. Fake citations - Citing non-existent papers (common issue with AI-generated citations)
2. Incorrect information - Mismatched authors, titles, years, etc.
3. Inconsistent formatting - Mixed citation formats
4. Missing citations - Referenced but uncited work

These issues can lead to:

• Paper rejection or retraction
• Damage to academic reputation
• Reviewers questioning research rigor

Special risk with AI-assisted writing: AI-generated citations have approximately 40% error rate; every citation must be verified via WebSearch.

Verification Principles

This skill provides verification principles based on canonical scholarly metadata and claim-level checking:

1. Proactive Verification (Verify During Writing)

Core idea: Verify immediately when adding a citation, rather than checking after writing is complete.

• Search for the paper via WebSearch each time a citation is needed
• Confirm the paper exists on Google Scholar
• Add to bibliography only after verification passes

2. Canonical Metadata Verification

Preferred authority order:

1. DOI / publisher landing page
2. arXiv ID or arXiv landing page
3. CrossRef
4. Semantic Scholar
5. Zotero metadata imported from a verified identifier
6. Google Scholar only for manual discovery or fallback lookup