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BibTeX reference checker
Paste your .bib file to check that each reference can be found and matches its record. Every entry is looked up in DBLP, OpenAlex and Crossref, and on arXiv when it has an arXiv ID; its title, first author, arXiv ID and DOI are compared with what the indexes hold.
ACL 2026 found over 100 accepted papers citing literature that does not exist; those papers must go through resubmission. Read the ACL statement
Check every citation in your paper
The submission check looks up the references you cite in your LaTeX project and catches cite keys missing from the .bib, plus page limits, anonymity leaks and required statements for ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML, ACL and CVPR. Free accounts see how many issues each check finds; a Submission pass shows every issue with its line.
What the results mean
- Found
- An index has a record with a matching title and first author.
- Title or author mismatch
- The closest record has a different title or first author. Often a typo or a wrong author list, sometimes a made-up paper.
- Wrong arXiv ID or DOI
- The identifier in the entry resolves to a different paper by other authors, or cannot exist. Often a copy error; it can also mean the reference was made up.
- Not found in any index
- Every index searched answered and none has the paper: DBLP, OpenAlex and Crossref by title, arXiv for an arXiv ID, Crossref for a DOI. Confirm it exists and that the title is exact.
- Not checked
- An index did not answer, the time limit was reached, or the entry has no title. Run the check again: an index that did not answer never counts as “not found”.
Web pages, software and datasets are often missing from scholarly indexes, so check those links yourself. Each run looks up up to 60 entries; a longer file is checked 60 entries at a time. Your file is not saved.