Check an AI-written thesis before you submit it
AI writing tools draft a thesis in minutes, references included, and the references are where they go wrong. Paste your bibliography to see which works exist as you cited them.
Up to 25 references a check, 3 checks a day.
How it works
Paste or upload
A reference list, a .bib or .ris file, or the whole draft as Word or PDF.
Each work looked up
In Crossref, where publishers register their papers, then OpenAlex for books and the rest, by DOI or by title, author and year.
See what to fix
Found, found with a different year or authors, or not found, and any retraction flagged.
Records from Crossref and OpenAlex; retractions from Retraction Watch, through Crossref. Nothing you paste or upload is kept.
Keep your library in Zotero?
Right-click items or a whole collection and choose Check references with hedwigai. The check opens here and starts at once. Free, for Zotero 7 and 8; nothing in your library changes.
What goes wrong in an AI-written thesis?
Three things, in order of how often an examiner catches them. References that do not exist: in one study of papers written by ChatGPT, 55% of GPT-3.5’s references and 18% of GPT-4’s were invented, and they look exactly like real ones. Real references with the wrong year, authors or pages: a quarter of GPT-4’s. And sentences that cite a real paper for something it does not say, which no list check can find.
What should I check before I submit?
Every reference against a registry, which this page does. Every retracted paper you cite, which this page flags. And every sentence that cites a source, against that source. The last one is the full check: sign in and paste the whole draft into hedwigai, or have your AI agent send it with the reference-checker skill, and each citing sentence comes back marked with the passage that supports it, or that it does not.
Will it change my thesis?
No. The free check only reads your references. The full check returns your draft exactly as written, with a verdict beside each reference and each citing sentence. What to change is yours to decide.
What does it cost?
This page is free: 25 references a check, 3 checks a day. The full check is billed per reference, a few dollars for a thesis, and new accounts start with credit.