AI-written manuscripts are arriving with references that look perfect and don't exist. CiteWarden batch-checks every citation against real scholarly databases and hands you an evidence-backed report, before you stake your name on it.
Built for reviewers, editors, and committees, not for authors checking their own work.
Every citation checker on the market is built for the author self-checking their own bibliography. Nobody built for the reviewer, editor, or committee member who has to vet 60 references they didn't write, so they're doing it by hand, or not at all.
"These phantom references are really hard to spot. We've had papers that have been through several rounds of review."
Her current workaround: email authors and ask for copies of the cited papers. "Most respond they cannot locate the papers."
No account to configure, no per-credit meter. Send the reference list; get back a decision-ready report.
Paste a reference list or upload the manuscript. Any style, APA, IEEE, Vancouver, BibTeX. No formatting cleanup required.
Each reference is checked against CrossRef and OpenAlex, DOI resolution, plus title, author, and year cross-matching, with a transparent evidence trail.
A field-level report grades each citation Verified, Metadata mismatch, or Not found, with the matched record for every call.
Not a binary "real/fake" widget. Every verdict shows the actual record it matched, which fields agreed, and exactly what was checked where, so your judgment is defensible.
Screen a submission's references in minutes instead of chasing DOIs by hand.
Desk-check citations before a manuscript ever reaches reviewers, the screening big publishers already do internally.
Verify a dissertation's bibliography before the defense, when the stakes are highest.
Batch-check student work for AI-fabricated sources without reading every reference yourself.
We're candid about this: the underlying check, resolving DOIs and matching metadata against CrossRef and OpenAlex, is not exotic, and good author-side tools exist. Our wedge is the workflow, the evidence-first report, and the trust layer for the person who has to sign off.
Straightforward pricing for the moment a citation's authenticity actually matters.
One manuscript or thesis, up to 120 references.
For active reviewers and small journals.
Departments, integrity offices, editorial desks.
Pricing is an early hypothesis, anchored above commodity per-credit tools because the product is a gatekeeper-grade report, not raw checks. To be validated with design partners.
Those are excellent author-side tools: you paste your own bibliography and get it cleaned up. CiteWarden is built for the other side of the desk, the reviewer, editor, or committee vetting a manuscript they didn't write. The difference is the workflow and the deliverable: a transparent, evidence-first report designed to justify a trust decision, with an optional human sign-off. The core lookups run against the same public databases; we don't pretend that part is secret.
CrossRef and OpenAlex, comprehensive, authoritative public scholarly-metadata sources. We resolve DOIs directly and cross-match title, author, and year. When a source record is missing a field (it happens), we corroborate through the fields that are present rather than guessing.
Yes, and we say so plainly. Verified means the cited work genuinely exists with consistent metadata. It does not judge whether the citation supports the claim it's attached to. CiteWarden catches fabrication and metadata drift; it does not replace scholarly reading.
Audits are processed to produce your report and are not retained beyond that. We publish nothing and share nothing.
Today CiteWarden covers scholarly literature indexed in CrossRef and OpenAlex. Case law and non-indexed sources are on the roadmap, not in the current audit.
We're onboarding our first reviewers and editors. Send one real bibliography and we'll return a full audit report, free, in exchange for your honest feedback.
Early access, onboarding a limited number of design partners.