verify-citation

name	verify-citation
description	Confirm a paper actually exists (arXiv / Semantic Scholar / OpenAlex) before citing it. Use before writing any new citation.

/verify-citation

Verify that a paper exists before writing it as a citation.

Inspired by the citation-verification patterns in flonat/claude-research and Imbad0202/academic-research-skills.

When to use

Run /verify-citation before writing any new citation into a .tex, .bib, or .md file. If the user asks you to "add a reference to X", run this skill first — do not write the citation until verification passes.

Usage

/verify-citation "Author, Title, Year"
/verify-citation "the paper we discussed about spectral geometry"
/verify-citation  (no argument — verify all citations in the last assistant turn)

Steps

Step 1 — Extract the citation. If an argument is given, use it. Otherwise, extract every paper reference from the last assistant turn (titles, author–year pairs, DOIs, arXiv IDs).

Step 2 — Search. For each citation, search at least two of:

• arXiv: https://arxiv.org/search/?searchtype=all&query=<title+author>
• Semantic Scholar: https://api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1/paper/search?query=<title>
• OpenAlex: https://api.openalex.org/works?search=<title>

Use WebSearch or WebFetch to run the searches.

Step 3 — Report verdict.

Result	Action
Found on 2+ sources, title and authors match	VERIFIED — write the citation
Found on 1 source, minor title variation	LIKELY — note the discrepancy, write with caution
Found on 0 sources, or title/author mismatch	UNVERIFIED — do NOT write the citation

For UNVERIFIED: say "I cannot confirm this paper exists. Do you have a DOI or arXiv ID?" Do not invent an alternative. Do not write a citation that cannot be verified.

Step 4 — Write the citation (VERIFIED and LIKELY only). Use the metadata from the verified source (exact title, exact authors, correct year). Never reconstruct citation details from memory — use what the database returned.

Anti-patterns to avoid

• Do not assume a paper exists because the title sounds familiar.
• Do not cite a paper you read during training without verifying it still exists and the details are correct.
• Do not mix elements from different papers into one citation ("vibe citing" — the hardest fabrication to detect).
• Do not mark something VERIFIED if you only searched once and found one result with a slightly different title.

CLAUDE.md instruction

Add this to your project's CLAUDE.md to make this the default:

Never write a citation into any file without first running /verify-citation.
If you cannot confirm a paper exists on Semantic Scholar, arXiv, or OpenAlex,
say so explicitly and wait for a DOI or arXiv ID from me.