prevent-citation-errors

name	prevent-citation-errors
category	school
description	Audit citations for identity, placement, entailment, version, and formatting before publication. Use when a draft must not overstate or misattribute its evidence.

prevent-citation-errors

A valid-looking reference can still point to the wrong work or fail to support the sentence. Audit at the claim level.

When to use

• Use for papers, reports, briefs, technical docs, legal or policy background, and externally reviewed writing.
• Apply greater scrutiny to numerical, causal, controversial, safety-critical, or quotation-dependent claims.

Procedure

1. Extract every citation-bearing claim and every material uncited factual claim.
2. Verify source identity using authors, title, venue, date, version, DOI or stable identifier.
3. Open the cited version and locate the exact passage, table, figure, dataset, or method.
4. Test entailment: the source must support the claim’s subject, scope, direction, magnitude, population, and time.
5. Check citation placement so readers can tell which sentence or clause it supports.
6. Mark primary versus secondary citation and replace citation laundering when the original evidence is available.
7. Check quotations word for word with a precise locator and enough surrounding context.
8. Check retractions, corrections, superseding versions, broken links, and duplicated references.
9. Validate bibliography-text correspondence and the required style.
10. Keep an exception log for unresolved access, indirect support, and claims needing revision.

Failure plan

• Never invent bibliographic metadata, page numbers, DOIs, or quotations.
• If a source only partially supports a sentence, narrow the claim or add evidence.
• If the cited work is inaccessible, label that limitation and avoid a definitive verification claim.
• Formatting correctness never substitutes for evidentiary support.

Done

• Every material claim is checked for correctly placed support or labeled as analysis
• Source identity, version, entailment, quotation, and locator checks pass
• The reference list and in-text citations agree with no fabricated or orphan entries