About

pubcheck checks citations against public publication indexes.

pubcheck extracts references from manuscripts, grants, bibliographies, and other text files. It checks recognized identifiers and titles against publication records. The report lists failed checks and the reason for each failure.

What it checks

Identifiers such as PMID, PMCID, DOI, arXiv ID, ISBN, NCT ID, RRID, accession, and URL.
Publication details returned by public indexes, including title, author names, year, and journal when available.
Retraction and withdrawal status when the checked sources report it.
In-text numeric markers and reference-list links. Author-year citations are checked when pubcheck can parse enough first-surname/year pairs from both the body and reference list.

Result labels

matches record: The checked record matches the citation details.
retracted: The cited record is retracted or withdrawn.
doesn't match record: A record was found, but the title, authors, year, or venue differ.
invalid identifier: The identifier is malformed or impossible for that source.
not found: No checked source returned a matching record.
not verified: Required citation details were missing, or pubcheck has no lookup source for this reference type.
lookup failed: A lookup service failed. Retry the check.

Limits

A citation that matches a record can still be wrong for the claim. pubcheck checks the reference, not the argument around it.
Title-only matching is approximate. Short or generic titles can match the wrong record.
Indexing can lag. Recent papers may not be in every index yet.
Some sources are not indexed. Books, theses, internal reports, and grey literature may not appear in public indexes.
Publication records can be messy. Author order, accents, initials, and journal title casing can make a real citation look like it doesn't match the record.
In-text checks depend on the document structure pubcheck can extract. Bracketed [1], parenthetical (1,2), and superscript markers are checked against the reference list. Author-year citations are checked when pubcheck can parse enough first-surname/year pairs from both the body and reference list.

What it is not

pubcheck does not read the paper, decide whether the citation supports the sentence around it, or judge the science. It reports which citation checks passed, which failed, and why.

For confidential manuscripts, grants, reviews, or unpublished figures, run pubcheck serve on your machine. The default local server still sends citation identifiers and titles to public lookup services. Use pubcheck serve --offline to prevent outbound lookup calls. Offline mode does not verify publication records against public indexes.