Guide · Updated 12 October 2026

How to check that every reference in your thesis is real

Examiners and reviewers increasingly check references, because invented or garbled citations have become common since AI writing tools arrived. One reference that doesn't exist can make an examiner doubt the whole chapter. Here is how to check yours before they do.

The five problems to look for

• References that don't exist. A plausible title, real-sounding authors, a journal that exists, but no such paper. This is the classic AI-tool error.
• Mixed-up details. The paper exists, but the year, volume, pages or author list belong to a different paper.
• Wrong DOI. The DOI resolves to a different paper, or to nothing.
• In-text and list mismatch. A citation in the text with no entry in the list, or list entries never cited.
• Claims the source doesn't make. The paper is real but doesn't say what your sentence says it does.

Check them by hand

• Start with the DOI. Paste it after https://doi.org/. It should open the exact paper you cite, with the same title and authors.
• No DOI? Search the exact title in quotes on Google Scholar, Crossref (search.crossref.org) or OpenAlex. Books and reports may only be in a library catalogue.
• Compare every field: authors, year, title, journal, volume, pages. Small differences usually mean you copied the details from a secondary source.
• Re-read what you claim. For your key arguments, open the source and check that it really supports the sentence that cites it.
• Match text and list. Your reference manager (Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote, BibTeX) handles this if you cite through it; manually typed citations are where mismatches hide.

By hand this takes about a minute per reference. For a thesis with 150 to 300 references, that is a full working day, which is why most people only spot-check.

What to do with a reference you can't find

• If you found it through an AI tool or someone else's list and can't locate the original, remove it and find a real source for the claim, or drop the claim.
• If it is a real but obscure work (a thesis, a government report, a conference with no DOI), add a stable link or archive identifier so the examiner can find it.
• If the details were wrong, correct them from the publisher's page, not from another paper's reference list.

Questions

Do all references have a DOI? No. Most journal articles since the 2000s do; many books, reports, older papers and theses don't. A missing DOI isn't a problem by itself.

Will my supervisor check? Many now spot-check a few references. External examiners and journal reviewers increasingly do the same, especially for surprising claims.