reference-audit-guide

---
name: reference-audit-guide
description: Use when the user asks for citation-verification principles, reference-audit best practices, or guidance on preventing fake or inaccurate citations in academic writing.
---

# Citation Verification Reference Guide

A reference guide for citation verification in academic paper writing, providing verification principles and best practices.

**Core Principle**: Proactively verify every citation during the writing process using trusted scholarly sources rather than memory.

## Core Problems

Citation issues in academic papers seriously impact research integrity:

1. **Fake citations** - Citing non-existent papers
2. **Incorrect information** - Mismatched authors, titles, years, etc.
3. **Inconsistent formatting** - Mixed citation formats
4. **Missing citations** - Referenced but uncited work

These issues can lead to:
- Paper rejection or retraction
- Damage to academic reputation
- Reviewers questioning research rigor

## Verification Principles

This skill provides verification principles based on trusted scholarly sources:

### 1. Proactive Verification

**Core idea**: Verify immediately when adding a citation, rather than checking after writing is complete.

- Search for the paper each time a citation is needed
- Confirm the paper exists in a trusted source
- Add to bibliography only after verification passes

### 2. Source Hierarchy

Prefer these sources:
- publisher page or DOI resolver
- PubMed for biomedical papers
- arXiv for preprints
- Crossref or Semantic Scholar for metadata cross-checking
- Google Scholar as a fallback discovery aid

### 3. Information Matching Verification

**Information that must match**:
- Title
- Authors
- Year
- Publication venue

### 4. Claim Verification

**Key principle**: When citing a specific claim, confirm the claim actually appears in the paper.

- Access the paper PDF
- Search for relevant keywords
- Confirm the accuracy of the claim
- Record the section or page where the claim appears

## Best Practices

1. **Never generate citations from memory**
2. **Do not guess when verification fails**
3. **Mark unverifiable references clearly**
4. **Differentiate preprints from published versions**
5. **Verify the claim, not just the metadata**