Skill: phy041/phy-citation-checker (version 1.0.2)

--- name: check-citations description: Verify academic citations against CrossRef, Semantic Scholar, and OpenAlex. Detects AI-hallucinated references, chimeric citations, and suspicious patterns. version: 1.0.0 metadata: openclaw: requires: bins: - python3 install: - kind: uv package: requests emoji: "\U0001F50D" homepage: https://github.com/PHY041/claude-skill-citation-checker --- # check-citations Verify academic citations against CrossRef, Semantic Scholar, and OpenAlex. Detects AI-hallucinated references, chimeric citations (real title + wrong authors), and suspicious patterns before submission. ## When to Use - After writing or editing a `.bib` file with AI assistance - Before submitting a paper, thesis, or report - When reviewing AI-generated literature sections - As a CI/CD check in LaTeX manuscript pipelines - When auditing existing bibliographies for dead or fabricated references ## Background - 6-55% of AI-generated citations are fabricated (varies by model/domain) - 100+ hallucinated references found in NeurIPS 2025 accepted papers - Universities increasingly treat fake citations as academic misconduct - Three hallucination types: **fully fabricated**, **chimeric** (real title + wrong authors), **modified real** (slightly altered metadata) ## Usage ### Quick Check (Single File) ```bash python scripts/citation_checker.py references.bib ``` ### Check All `.bib` Files in a Directory ```bash python scripts/citation_checker.py path/to/report/ ``` ### JSON Output (CI/CD Pipelines) ```bash python scripts/citation_checker.py references.bib --json ``` ### Verbose Mode (Debug API Responses) ```bash python scripts/citation_checker.py references.bib --verbose ``` ## How It Works ### Cascading Multi-Source Verification Each citation is checked against three independent databases: | Source | Coverage | Strength | |--------|----------|----------| | CrossRef | 140M+ DOI-registered works | Best for journal/conference papers with DOIs | | Semantic Scholar | 200M+ papers | Best author disambiguation, arXiv coverage | | OpenAlex | 240M+ works | Broadest coverage, fully open | **Verification logic:** - Found in 2+ sources with matching title → **verified** (high confidence) - Found in 1 source only → **suspicious** (manual check recommended) - Found in 0 sources → **not_found** (likely hallucinated) ### Chimeric Detection When a citation's title matches a real paper but the authors don't overlap at all, it's flagged as a possible **chimeric hallucination** — the most dangerous type because the title looks real on Google Scholar. ### Red Flag Heuristics - Invalid DOI format (doesn't start with `10.xxxx/`) - Suspiciously generic title patterns ("A Comprehensive Survey of...") - Future publication year - Missing author or year fields - Single-word author names (incomplete metadata) ## Exit Codes | Code | Meaning | |------|---------| | 0 | All citations verified | | 1 | One or more citations not found | | 2 | Suspicious citations only (no hard failures) | ## Dependencies ```bash pip install requests ``` No API keys required — uses free tiers of all three databases. ## Accuracy (Tested) | Category | Result | Description | |----------|--------|-------------| | Known-good | 9/10 (90%) | Famous ML papers (Vaswani, Devlin, Brown, He, etc.) | | Known-bad | 10/10 (100%) | Fabricated papers with plausible titles | | Chimeric | 5/5 (100%) | Real titles with wrong authors | | **False positive rate** | **10%** | 1 miss: unpublished tech report without DOI | | **False negative rate** | **0%** | No fake paper was ever verified | The core guarantee: **fake papers are never marked as real.** ## Limitations - Papers without DOI that have many derivatives (e.g., BERT without DOI) may not be found via title search alone — always include DOIs when available - Semantic Scholar free tier rate-limits at ~100 requests/5 minutes — batch verification is slower - Cannot verify papers behind paywalls or not indexed in any of the three databases - Book chapters, technical reports, and grey literature have lower coverage ## Integration with LaTeX Workflows ### Pre-commit Hook ```bash #!/bin/bash # .git/hooks/pre-commit python scripts/citation_checker.py references.bib --json > /tmp/cite_check.json NOT_FOUND=$(python3 -c "import json; d=json.load(open('/tmp/cite_check.json')); print(d['summary']['not_found'])") if [ "$NOT_FOUND" -gt "0" ]; then echo "BLOCKED: $NOT_FOUND unfound citations. Run 'python scripts/citation_checker.py references.bib --verbose' to investigate." exit 1 fi ``` ### GitHub Actions ```yaml - name: Check citations run: | pip install requests python scripts/citation_checker.py references.bib --json > citation_report.json python -c " import json, sys r = json.load(open('citation_report.json')) if r['summary']['not_found'] > 0: print(f'FAIL: {r[\"summary\"][\"not_found\"]} citations not found') sys.exit(1) print(f'PASS: {r[\"summary\"][\"verified\"]} verified, {r[\"summary\"][\"suspicious\"]} suspicious') " ```


Security scan verdicts — ClawScan: clean | static analysis: clean | VirusTotal:  | SkillSpector: suspicious (MEDIUM)