# Citely product capabilities Last updated: 2026-10-09 Citely is an AI citation checker and academic source finder that verifies whether references are real and correct, detects fabricated or mismatched citations, and finds published English and Chinese papers that support a claim. Its two main workspaces are Citation Checker for reference-list verification and Source Finder for reverse source tracing from a claim, paragraph or draft. ## Citation Checker Paste a reference list in any citation style. Citely splits it into individual references, extracts title, authors, year, journal, volume, pages and DOI, and checks each one against scholarly databases. Each reference gets one of three results: - **Verified**: a published record matches the reference. - **Mismatch**: the paper exists, but some details are wrong. Citely names the wrong field (for example the year or the DOI) and shows the correct record. - **Not found**: no database holds a matching record. Most often the reference is fabricated; sometimes it is grey literature or brand new. Citely shows the closest records so you can decide. Problems are labeled by pattern, so you can see why a reference failed: - fully fabricated paper - chimera citation: real authors and journal, invented title - real DOI attached to a different paper - wrong year, volume or pages On any reference marked not found, click "Find a real source": Citely searches for papers that support the sentence the reference was attached to, and you replace it in one click. Download the results as a Word report for a supervisor, journal or integrity file. ## Databases - International: Crossref, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, Google Scholar, PubMed, arXiv - Chinese: Wanfang, CNKI How a reference is checked: 1. If it has a DOI, the DOI is resolved and the record is compared field by field. 2. Without a DOI, the title is searched across the databases and the best match is compared on authors, year and journal. 3. Chinese references are matched in Wanfang and CNKI on title, authors and year, with no translation and no DOI needed. Citely does not depend on any single index, so a paper missing from Google Scholar is not flagged as fake when another database holds it. ## Source Finder and reverse source tracing Paste a claim, a paragraph or a whole section of a draft. Citely splits the text into individual claims and finds published papers that support each one. Every result shows the title, authors, year, journal, DOI and the passage that backs the claim, and every result is verified. Use it to: - **Find a source you forgot to cite.** Paste the sentence you wrote, or what you remember of the idea. Citely finds papers that make the same point and shows the matching passage, so you can recognise the paper you read and cite it. Using an idea without citing it counts as plagiarism even when it is accidental. - **Add references to a draft.** When a draft has too few references, or a supervisor or reviewer asks for more citations, Citely finds papers for each claim, so every added reference fits a specific sentence. It also surfaces related work a literature review missed. - **Find authoritative support for a core argument.** Each result is labeled with journal, impact factor (official data), JCR quartile, 中科院分区, 北大核心, CSSCI and citation count. Filter to Q1 or core journals, or sort by citations, to keep the strongest evidence. - **Find where a statement, statistic or idea came from.** ## Chinese literature - Citation Checker verifies Chinese references against Wanfang and CNKI without translating them, and matches papers without a DOI on title, authors and year. - Source Finder accepts Chinese text and returns Chinese and English papers. - Chinese journals are labeled 北大核心, CSSCI, 科技核心 and 中科院分区 where they apply. - GB/T 7714 is supported for citation output. ## Citation styles and export - Styles: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver, GB/T 7714, BibTeX - Export: Word report, BibTeX, RIS (import into Zotero, EndNote or Mendeley), or copy a formatted citation ## Access and languages - Every new account gets two free checks, no credit card required. - The Citation Checker and Source Finder pages open without an account. - The site is available in English, 简体中文, 繁體中文, 日本語, 한국어, Español, Deutsch, Français, Português and Русский. ## Privacy Citely never adds your text to any plagiarism or similarity database, never uses it to train AI models, never sells it, and deletes it automatically. ## API and MCP for AI agents Developers and AI agents can run citation checks with a Citely API key (Bearer token). - `POST /api/v1/citation-checks`: start a check for a list of references - `GET /api/v1/citation-checks/{jobId}`: get progress and item-by-item results - MCP server at https://citely.ai/api/mcp with the tools `get_citely_account`, `start_citation_integrity_check` and `get_citation_integrity_result` - Works with agents in Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and Codex - OpenAPI specification: https://citely.ai/openapi.json - Documentation: https://citely.ai/docs/api ## What Citely is not Citely does not invent references, check plagiarism or detect AI-written text, and it is not a reference manager. It verifies references and finds real sources; you should still read a source before citing it. ## Official pages - [Citation Checker](https://citely.ai/citation-checker) - [Source Finder](https://citely.ai/source-finder) - [Verification method](https://citely.ai/citation-verification-methodology) - [API documentation](https://citely.ai/docs/api)