AI Assist (optional)
Add your own Anthropic API key to unlock AI-assisted line-break fixing and double-checking of unverified references with web search. Your key is stored only in this browser and sent directly to Anthropic — never through any server this app controls. Get a key at console.anthropic.com.
reference detected
How it works
- Parse — splits your list into individual entries and classifies each as journal article, book, book chapter, website, or other.
- Extract — pulls out authors, year, title, journal/publisher, DOI, URL, and ISBN.
- Look up — queries CrossRef (articles), OpenLibrary + Google Books (books), and OpenAlex (fallback). Probes URLs for reachability.
- Verify — scores each reference against what was found using weighted field matching (title 40%, author 30%, year 15%, journal 10%, pages 5%). Formats the canonical Chicago Author-Date citation.
URL checking is limited by browser security: most URLs show "unverifiable" rather than pass/fail because the browser cannot read responses from other origins. A network failure (DNS error) is reported as "not found."
Using the tool
Paste the complete reference list of an article into the window.
Fix Line Breaks — cleans up copy-paste artifacts from PDFs: joins lines that were broken mid-sentence or mid-URL, and removes stray page numbers. Run this before validating if your references came from a PDF.
Preview Structure — shows how the tool has parsed your list into individual entries before running validation. Use this to catch mis-parsed references — for example, two entries merged into one, or a multi-line reference split in two.
Validate References — queries the databases and scores each reference against what was found.
Interpreting results: Some references not being found is normal — coverage varies by type. Books, book chapters, and websites are hardest to match. Pay particular attention to journal articles marked "not found": together, CrossRef and OpenAlex cover nearly all published journal articles, so a missing journal article often signals a real problem.
AI Double-Check:
✓ Verified References ()
✗ Unverified References ()
AI double-check available — click to review
URL checking from the browser is limited: cross-origin requests return an opaque response — the URL is reachable but we cannot confirm the HTTP status code. Only DNS failures or network errors are reported as "not found."