verify_citationLABSCO SUMMARY
Catch the invented reference before your reader does.
One call says whether a cited paper exists and whether the year, authors and venue you wrote down are the ones on record — with real conflicts kept separate from harmless preprint differences.
What it is
A Python server with a single tool. Give it a title — plus any of authors, year, DOI, arXiv ID or URL — and it looks the paper up across three scholarly databases, then reports whether it exists and whether the metadata you cited matches. Built on academic-refchecker.
What you get
- verify_citation returns a verified true or false, the authoritative metadata it matched, and separate lists of errors, warnings and suggestions
- Hard errors are the ones that should stop you: a genuine year, author or venue mismatch, or a paper that cannot be found
- Warnings are the ones that should not: arXiv v1 against v2, preprint against published venue, or a field you simply did not supply
- A Crossref fuzzy fallback returns the closest variant when the exact title is not found, so a typo and an invented reference look different
Requirements
Python; the package is on PyPI as mcp-refchecker. No account and no key — Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex and Crossref are queried directly.
Setup effort
One command — pip install mcp-refchecker
USE CASES
01
Checking a reference an assistant produced
The title goes in, and either the authoritative record comes back or the paper does not exist.
02
Cleaning a bibliography before submission
Run each entry and act on the errors; the warnings tell you what is merely a preprint difference.
03
Resolving a near-miss title
When the exact title is not found, the Crossref fallback returns the closest variant — usually enough to see whether you mistyped.
1 tool
Listed in project docs. Your client may show a different list.
BEFORE YOU INSTALL
What to know first
Tools you get
1 tool named in the project's documentation.
Requires
- Python 3.10 or later
- uv for the uvx route, or pip for the pip route
Where it runs
Both documented setups run the server on your machine.
INSTALLATION
Connect your client
Server setup
TERMINAL
pip install mcp-refcheckerMCP Clients
Claude Desktop — uvx
CLAUDE DESKTOP — UVX · JSON
{
"mcpServers": {
"refchecker": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"mcp-refchecker"
]
}
}
}Claude Desktop — pip
CLAUDE DESKTOP — PIP · JSON
{
"mcpServers": {
"refchecker": {
"command": "mcp-refchecker"
}
}
}
