Open-source CLI tool 'citecheck' flags hallucinated and retracted academic references
A developer has released citecheck, a free open-source command-line tool that verifies whether references in academic bibliographies actually exist. The tool was spun out of a larger project called Acurio, built after the developer repeatedly found LLM-hallucinated citations in real student theses. Users can point citecheck at a .bib, .ris, or CSL-JSON file, and it cross-checks each reference against three public scholarly databases: Crossref, OpenAlex, and DOAJ. The tool requires no API key or account, and returns verdicts of verified, partial, not found, or retracted for each entry. It is available via npx and is MIT-licensed on GitHub, with the developer noting books and non-English titles as current weak spots.
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