bibguard

One command to detect hallucinated, broken, and retracted citations in your paper.

Python $ pip install bibguard
Node.js $ npx bibguard paper.bib
bibguard paper.bib
  bibguard v0.3.0
  paper.bib — 42 entries

  [ 1/42] vaswani2017attention                  crossref, dblp
  [ 2/42] he2016resnet                          crossref, s2
  [ 3/42] fake_quantum_paper                    no match
  [ 4/42] wakefield1998mmr                     ⚠️  crossref
   ...
  [42/42] brown2020gpt3                         s2, openalex

  ──────────────────────────────────────────────────
  ✅ 38  ⚠️  2  ❌ 2  (42 entries in 67.3s)

  FAIL entries:
     fake_quantum_paper — phantom_doi
     halluc_gpt_ref_7 — verification
  ──────────────────────────────────────────────────

Install

Python

pip install

CLI + Python API. TeX cross-audit, duplicate detection, auto-fix .bib.

pip install bibguard
bibguard paper.bib
TypeScript

npm / npx

Zero dependencies. Works in Node.js 18+ and browsers. All APIs support CORS.

npx bibguard paper.bib
# or: npm install bibguard
Browser

Chrome / Firefox Extension

Paste BibTeX into a popup. All verification runs client-side.

Download from GitHub

Architecture

bibguard architecture diagram

Try it now

Paste BibTeX entries below. Verification runs entirely in your browser — no data leaves your machine.

Features

🔍

5-Source Cascade

arXiv, Crossref, DBLP, Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex. Falls back gracefully across sources.

🚨

Phantom ID Detection

DOIs and arXiv IDs that look valid but don't resolve — the strongest hallucination signal.

💥

Kill-Shot Logic

A phantom ID cannot be overridden by a similar search result. No false negatives on fabricated identifiers.

📝

TeX Cross-Audit

\cite{key} with no .bib entry, and orphan entries never cited. (Python version)

🔧

Auto-Fix

Corrected .bib with missing DOIs and eprint IDs filled in from API results.

🌐

Browser-Native

TypeScript version is zero-dependency. All 5 APIs support CORS — no proxy needed.

Benchmark

v0.3.0 — validated on 200 entries sampled from crawled datasets. Reproduce it yourself.

CategoryNKey Metric
Hallucinated50100% detected (all FAIL)
Chimera50100% detected
Real papers500% false positive, 86% clean OK
Retracted502% flagged (L0 limitation)

Also validated on 58-case golden test set: 14/14 hallucinations caught, 5/5 chimeras detected.

API Sources

No API keys required. All support CORS for browser use.

arXiv
ID resolution
Crossref
DOI · 150M+
DBLP
CS gold standard
Semantic Scholar
200M+ papers
OpenAlex
250M+ works

AI Assistant Integration

Skill definitions for major AI coding assistants.

Claude Code
/bibguard paper.bib
OpenAI Codex
/bibguard paper.bib
Cursor
auto on .bib/.tex
Any CLI agent
bibguard --json

Need deeper verification?

bibguard handles L0 (existence & metadata verification). For semantic NLI, citation intent classification, graph anomaly detection, and Bayesian risk scoring, see IntegriRef — the full L0-L4 verification stack.