Know which of your references are real, and which are retracted

A fabricated reference almost always fails the registry lookups: its DOI resolves to nothing or the work appears in no index. Paste it into the check above and see. A reference marked verified was found in a published research database, with the one that found it named. An unindexed reference is not proof of fabrication, which is why the check says verify manually instead of guessing.

No, and nothing that reads only references can. Matching citations against references needs the writing itself. Upload your thesis or paper to Thesisroom and it checks both directions: citations that point at no reference, and references that appear nowhere in the writing.

An uncited reference looks identical to a cited one until the writing is read beside it, so the references alone cannot answer this. Thesisroom reads both together.

A retracted paper was usually sound when it entered your bibliography and was pulled afterwards, and that is the unsettling part: what just happened is ordinary. The best-known case in medicine sat in reference lists for twelve years before its full retraction. Read the retraction notice, then decide whether your claim stands without the paper. If it stands, cite a sound source in its place. If it leans on the retracted work, the claim needs rework, and learning that before an examiner or committee does is the point. A project runs for years, and retraction does not stop happening while you write. Reference Watch in Thesisroom re-checks your sources every week and tells you when one changes.

The verdicts come from published research databases such as Crossref and OpenAlex. Every verdict names the registry that answered for it, so each answer carries its source on the row.

Nothing you paste is stored. The check runs and the result lives in your browser tab, and it is saved only if you create an account and choose to keep it.

A retracted source is marked in the registries that track retractions, and this check reads them. Paste the reference above and a retraction comes back marked retracted, with the notice linked. Retraction can also happen after you check, which is why Thesisroom re-checks saved sources every week.

A citation is still valid when the work it points at exists in a published research database and was not later retracted. This check answers both for each reference you paste. Validity can change afterwards, so a reference worth keeping is worth re-checking, which a saved result in Thesisroom gets every week.

Yes. Retraction has no time limit: a journal can pull a paper years after publication, and long after your submission date. The best-known case took twelve years. If a source central to your argument is retracted before your defense, your examiner or committee can find out first, unless something is re-checking for you.