How to check if a reference is real

Why it happens

AI writing tools can produce references that look right but don’t exist. So a reference has to be checked against the real source, not just read.

How common it is

Fabricated citations rose 12-fold in two years: about 1 in 277 PubMed-indexed papers in early 2026 cited a paper that doesn’t exist, up from 1 in 2,828 in 2023. That’s from a letter in The Lancet, reported by Retraction Watch on 7 May 2026.

Five checks by hand

1. Search the exact title in Google Scholar. Put it in quotes. A real paper shows up with the same authors.
2. Open the DOI at doi.org. Put it after https://doi.org/. A real DOI opens the paper’s page.
3. Match the authors, year and journal. Compare them with the paper’s own page.
4. Open the paper and find the sentence you’re citing. If it isn’t there, the source doesn’t back your claim.
5. Check the page number. The words you cite should be on the page you give.

Fixing what you find

If a detail is wrong, copy it from the paper’s own page or its DOI record. If the paper doesn’t exist, or doesn’t say what you cite, take it out and find a real source that does.

Or let your assistant check them

Your assistant can check every reference for you: each source is opened, each quote is matched word for word, and the details are checked against Crossref. See how reference checks work.