How CitationCheck works
Choose the journal and upload a PDF
Type the name (or ISSN) of the journal you are writing for. The rules come from the Citation Style Language project, which describes about 10 000 journals and styles; a journal without a style of its own uses the style of its publisher or field. The PDF needs a text layer (exported from Word, InDesign, LaTeX ...).
See how much was found
The reference list is split into entries and the citations in the text are found. You see the counts and the price of the report.
Pay and read the report
The report matches every citation with the reference list and applies the rules of the style. You receive an invoice for the check.
Download
Excel, CSV or JSON, or print the report.
What is checked
- MISSING
- A citation in the text has no reference with that first author. A single “Name year” that may not be a citation is shown only as a warning.
- YEAR MISMATCH / AUTHOR MISMATCH / AUTHOR ORDER
- The author is in the list, but with another year, other co-authors, or only as a co-author.
- AMBIGUOUS
- Several references fit (Smith 2020 with 2020a and 2020b): the letter is missing.
- UNCITED
- A reference that is never cited in the text.
- STYLE ORDER
- The list is not in the order the journal’s style produces (alphabetical, or by citation number). The finding says where the entry is expected.
- STYLE ENTRY / STYLE CITATION
- How an entry or a citation is written differs from what the style prints: initials, commas, “and” or “&”, “et al.”, the year in parentheses, DOI form. Each finding shows expected and found. Only the part before the title (authors, year) is compared, because that is where most mistakes are.
- NOMENCLATURAL
- The authority of a taxon name (Podarcis muralis (Laurenti, 1768)) is not a bibliographic citation and is not checked against the list.
For numbered styles we check that every number exists, every reference is cited, the numbering has no gaps and (as information) that it follows the order of first citation.
Limits - please read
- The rules are the journal’s CSL style, applied by a CSL engine. Styles can lag behind a journal’s current instructions; where they differ, the journal’s own instructions win. Some 170 rarely used styles cannot be applied and are not offered.
- The PDF layout can confuse the reader (two columns, unusual reference formats). The original text of each entry is shown so that you can verify a finding.
- We do not check whether a reference really exists, nor the content of the cited work.
- Scanned PDFs without a text layer cannot be read.