AI Source Finder
Source Finder From Text
Paste a sentence, claim, paragraph, or essay draft. Citely helps find academic sources that match the argument in your text, then points you toward source metadata you can review before citing.
Find sources for the claim, not just the keywords
Search engines are good when you already know which keywords to type. Research drafts are different. You often have a paragraph that makes a claim, but you do not know the paper, author, or exact database terms that would support it.
Citely starts from the text itself. It identifies the claim being made, searches for relevant scholarly sources, and helps you review source metadata before you decide whether the paper belongs in your bibliography.
This is especially useful for essay drafts, literature review notes, AI-assisted writing, and paragraphs where a citation is missing, weak, or possibly fabricated.
How to find sources from text
Paste text
Paste a sentence, paragraph, claim, essay section, or research note that needs academic support.
Extract claims
Citely identifies the research claims and concepts in the text so the search is based on meaning, not only keyword overlap.
Find scholarly sources
Citely searches scholarly data sources for papers that are relevant to the claim and shows source metadata for review.
Verify before citing
Review whether the source really supports the claim, then use citation verification to check DOI, title, author, year, and venue consistency.
Best use cases
Find sources for an essay paragraph
Paste an unsupported paragraph and look for papers that may support the specific claim, rather than searching broad essay keywords.
Replace weak or fabricated AI citations
If an AI draft included a suspicious reference, search from the claim and find a real source that can be checked independently.
Trace a research note back to literature
Use a sentence from your notes, outline, or literature review plan to find papers related to the argument you want to make.
Strengthen manuscript support
When a reviewer or advisor asks for stronger evidence, search from the exact sentence that needs support.
Where this fits in the Citely workflow
| Need | Citely page | Best next step |
|---|---|---|
| Find papers for a claim or paragraph | Source Finder From Text | Paste the text and review candidate sources. |
| Find academic sources by topic or claim | Academic Source Finder | Use the broader source-finder landing page. |
| Check whether a reference is real | Citation Verification Methodology | Review DOI, metadata, and Scholar visibility evidence. |
| Understand fake AI citation patterns | Citation Hallucination Patterns | Compare the reference against known failure modes. |
Frequently asked questions
What is a source finder from text?
A source finder from text takes a claim, sentence, paragraph, or essay draft and searches for academic sources that can support the specific statement. Instead of asking you to guess keywords, Citely extracts the research claim and looks for relevant papers across scholarly databases.
Can I find sources for an entire paragraph?
Yes. Citely is designed for paragraph-level source discovery. Paste a short paragraph or section, and Citely identifies the claims inside the text before searching for papers that match the argument rather than only the words.
How is this different from Google Scholar?
Google Scholar is useful for keyword search and citation discovery. Citely is different because it starts from your text and tries to find sources for the claims being made. Scholar visibility is useful evidence, but it should be compared with metadata and source relevance before you rely on a citation.
Can this help with essay drafts?
Yes. Students and researchers can paste an unsupported paragraph from an essay, thesis, or manuscript draft and use Citely to find academic sources that may support the claim. You should still read the paper and decide whether it truly supports your argument.
Does Citely verify the sources it finds?
Citely attempts to enrich and verify source metadata where possible, including DOI, title, author, year, venue, and database evidence. Source finding and citation verification work together: first find candidate sources, then check whether the reference metadata is reliable.
Turn unsupported text into a source search
Paste your claim or paragraph into Citely Source Finder, review candidate academic sources, then verify the citation metadata before you cite.
Open Source Finder