Claim-Based Source Discovery
Academic Source Finder
Paste a sentence, a claim, or a paragraph. Get peer-reviewed sources that support the argument, drawn from CrossRef, PubMed, arXiv, and OpenAlex.
Why claim-based search works better than keyword search
A traditional academic search engine takes keywords and returns ranked matches. That works when you already know what you're looking for — but it fails when you have a specific claim in a draft and need a source that actually supports it.
Consider the sentence: "Recent studies show that high-temperature superconductors such as cuprates remain poorly explained by BCS theory." A keyword search on "superconductor BCS cuprate" returns thousands of papers including reviews, tutorials, and loosely related experimental work. Most of them do not actually support the specific claim about BCS theory's limitations in cuprates.
Citely's source finder extracts the claim — "BCS theory does not fully explain cuprate superconductivity" — and returns papers whose content matches that assertion, ranked by relevance to the specific argument. DOI resolution runs in the same pass where available, so returned sources that expose a DOI are checked against public academic records.
How source finding works
Paste your text
A sentence, a paragraph, or a short section — up to 300 words. You can choose English sources, Chinese sources, or both.
Claim extraction and parallel search
Citely identifies the specific claims in your text and searches CrossRef, PubMed, arXiv, and OpenAlex in parallel for each. Multilingual coverage for non-English writing is built in.
Ranked results
Returned papers are scored by claim-relevance — not keyword overlap. Where a DOI is available, it's attempted against CrossRef. You see the best matches first, with abstract and publication metadata shown inline.
When source finding beats keyword search
Replacing AI-fabricated citations
If you used ChatGPT or Claude to draft a literature review, the in-text citations may be fabricated. Source finder takes the claim being made and finds a real paper that supports it — replacing the hallucinated citation with a verified one.
Writing from notes or a research log
You know what you want to argue but don't remember which paper you read it in. Paste the claim; find the paper — or a similar one — from your discipline's indexed literature.
Peer reviewing without endless database searches
When reviewing a paper, paste a questionable claim from the manuscript to quickly assess whether the cited supporting literature exists and is appropriate.
Strengthening a weakly-supported section
Your advisor flagged a paragraph as needing stronger citation. Paste the paragraph; get a ranked list of real papers that support each claim it makes.
Writing in your second language
Multilingual coverage means you can draft in English but pull Chinese, German, or Japanese sources when the primary literature is in those languages — particularly important for area studies, regional medicine, or local policy research.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from Google Scholar?
Google Scholar is a search engine over academic content — it returns papers that match your keywords. Citely's source finder works from a claim, not a keyword: paste a sentence or paragraph, and it returns papers that support the specific argument you're making, ranked by relevance with DOI resolution attempted where available. It complements Scholar rather than replacing it.
How does Citely decide which papers actually support my claim?
Citely extracts the key concepts and assertions from your text, searches multiple databases (CrossRef, PubMed, arXiv, OpenAlex) for papers in the relevant area, and ranks results by content-relevance to the specific claim — not just keyword overlap. Where a result has a DOI, it's attempted against CrossRef as an additional check, though final judgment on whether a source supports your argument remains yours.
What databases does the source finder cover?
CrossRef (160M+ scholarly records across all disciplines), PubMed (biomedical and life sciences), arXiv (physics, CS, math, quantitative biology, economics, statistics preprints), and OpenAlex (broad academic coverage including humanities and social sciences). Coverage extends across English and multilingual academic publishing.
Can I find sources for an entire paragraph at once?
Yes — this is the primary use case. Paste up to 300 words (a paragraph or short section). Citely identifies the distinct claims within the text and returns sources for each, rather than forcing you to break the paragraph down manually.
What if my claim is too specific to have direct sources?
Citely surfaces the closest available supporting papers and marks them by relevance score, so you can assess whether the available evidence is strong, partial, or absent. For highly novel claims, the absence of supporting literature is itself useful information — it tells you the argument needs to be softened, reframed, or supported by primary data rather than citation.
Does it work for non-English research?
Yes. Citely covers English, Chinese, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and French academic publishing where supported by the connected databases. For Chinese-language source discovery, Wanfang coverage is available for users working with 中文核心期刊 or domestic journals.
Find a real source for any claim
Paste text. Get peer-reviewed sources that support the argument, ranked by relevance with DOI resolution where available. No keyword juggling.
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