A Citation Hallucination Detector & Auto-Fixer
Validate and automatically correct your BibTeX bibliography against multiple academic databases.
Academic papers often contain citation errors — wrong titles, incorrect authors, mismatched years, or even completely fabricated references (hallucinations from AI tools). RefCheck automatically:
- ✅ Validates each citation against 6 academic databases
- 🔧 Auto-fixes metadata mismatches (title, authors, year, DOI)
- 🗑️ Removes unverifiable/hallucinated entries
- 📊 Reports a clear verification summary
RefCheck cross-references your citations against:
| Source | Lookup Methods |
|---|---|
| arXiv | arXiv ID, Title search |
| CrossRef | DOI, Title search |
| DBLP | Title search |
| Semantic Scholar | DOI, Title search |
| OpenAlex | DOI, Title search |
| Google Scholar | Title search (disabled by default) |
- Pass 1 — Validate & Fix: Checks each entry, auto-corrects metadata, removes invalid citations
- Pass 2 — Verify: Re-validates the cleaned file to confirm all entries are correct
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/voidful/RefCheck.git
cd RefCheck
# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt- Python 3.9+
- Dependencies:
bibtexparser,requests,beautifulsoup4,rich,Unidecode,lxml
# Validate and auto-fix a bib file
python main.py --bib references.bib| Option | Short | Description |
|---|---|---|
--bib | -b | Path to your .bib file (required) |
--output | -o | Output report path (optional) |
# Process your bibliography
python main.py --bib paper/references.bib
# With custom output path
python main.py --bib refs.bib --output validation_report.md┌─────────────────┐
│ Load .bib file │
└────────┬────────┘
▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ For each entry: │
│ 1. Query academic databases │
│ 2. Compare metadata (title, author, yr)│
│ 3. Calculate confidence score │
└────────┬────────────────────────────────┘
▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Decision: │
│ • confidence > 85% → Auto-fix metadata │
│ • Match found → Keep as-is │
│ • No match → Remove entry │
└────────┬────────────────────────────────┘
▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Save updated .bib file │
│ Run verification pass │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
RefCheck displays real-time progress and a final summary:
📚 BibGuard - Auto-Fix & Verify
Target: references.bib
Found 42 entries. Running validation and auto-fix...
Validating & Fixing ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 100% 42/42 ✓ 38 ⚠ 2 ✗ 2
✏️ Updates:
- Fixed 2 entries (metadata updated)
- Removed 2 invalid/hallucinated entries
✓ File saved.
🔄 Double checking (Re-validation)...
Verifying ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 100% 40/40 ✓ 40
==================================================
📊 Final Status
==================================================
Total: 40
✓ Verified: 40
⚠ Issues: 0
✗ Not found: 0
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ✅ Verified | Entry matches a known publication |
| Metadata was auto-corrected | |
| ❌ Removed | Entry could not be verified (likely hallucination) |
RefCheck/
├── main.py # Entry point & workflow orchestration
├── requirements.txt # Python dependencies
├── README.md
└── src/
├── fetcher.py # API clients for academic databases
├── comparator.py # Metadata comparison & scoring
├── parser.py # BibTeX parsing & saving
└── utils.py # Progress display & text utilities
MIT License — see LICENSE for details.
Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.
Built with:
- bibtexparser for BibTeX handling
- Rich for beautiful terminal output
- APIs from arXiv, CrossRef, DBLP, Semantic Scholar, and OpenAlex