Citations you can stand behind, checked against CrossRef.
Free to start. Works across CrossRef, PubMed, arXiv, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, CORE, and DOAJ.
What is citation verification?
Most AI tools generate citations, they produce a formatted reference but never check whether the paper behind it is real. That is how fabricated citations reach published work: the formatting looks perfect, so nobody questions the source.
CoChat closes that gap. Every source is checked against CrossRef’s 150 million-plus records, so verified sources get a green badge and disputed or unfindable references get flagged. You see the status before you cite, not after a reviewer or editor does.
Verification in four steps, automatically
The trustworthy version of your research starts here
Confirming one citation is useful. What changes how you work is where those verified sources go next.
Every verified source collects in your project, ready to drop into a literature review table and cite when you draft. Nothing unverified slips in, so the reference list you export was clean from the start.
Watch a fabricated citation get caught
Two references that look equally polished. One resolves to a real paper; one does not exist. CoChat tells them apart the moment each one appears.
Generator vs. Verifier
Citation generators (Scribbr, MyBib, etc.)
CoChat citation verification
Core job
Format a source into APA, MLA, or Chicago
Confirm the source is real and correctly cited
Fabricated source
Formats it perfectly, fake in, fake out
Flags it, no CrossRef match
Wrong attribution
Cannot detect it
Checks the claim against the paper
When you find errors
When a reviewer, editor, or judge does
Before you cite, in real time
Output
A formatted citation string
A verified source plus a clean exportable bibliography
Use both. Verify here; format anywhere.
CoChat verifies what other tools only format.
A citation can fail two ways, and CoChat guards both.
1. The source does not exist. AI invents references that look perfect and lead nowhere, and a newer model does not fix it:
The reason is not dishonesty, it is forgetting: during a long synthesis the source data slips out of the model's context window, and it fills the gap with citation-shaped text. A bigger model fills the same gap the same way, which is why the fix has to live outside the model.
2. The source is real but does not say what it is cited for. This one predates AI, and the research literature has measured it for decades:
Grounding in a database catches the first. Reading the full source catches the second. CoChat does both. The CoChat Citation Registry, our proprietary, persistent record of every source you gather, checks each one against CrossRef the moment it appears, and CoChat reads the full source to check the claim against what the paper actually says, so the first real question about any citation, is it real and does it support my point, is answered before you write a sentence.
Related reading: How CoChat searches seven academic databases at once
Same home, different research
Same capability, different context. Click to see how citation verification works across fields and roles.
See the complete citation workflow
Management is the lifecycle. These are the focused capabilities inside it, each answering a narrower question.
Citation Management
Find, verify, triage, review, and cite, in one workspace. Verification is one step inside it.
Management is the lifecycle. Verification and triage are the deep dives inside it. You get all three in one workspace.
Frequently asked questions
1. What is the difference between a citation generator and citation verification?
2. How accurate are AI-generated citations?
3. Can AI check if a citation is real?
4. Does CoChat format citations in APA or MLA?
5. Do I still read the sources myself?
Stop trusting citations. Start verifying them.
Every DOI checked. Every source badged. Every fabricated reference flagged the moment it appears.
Free to start. Built into every CoChat research workflow.