Verify citation
Skill Speckledrattlesnakeinoculant470/claude-for-researchers/starter/.claude/skills/verify-citation
Optimize Claude Code workflows for long-term physics and mathematics research projects with structured toolkits and practical guidance.
npx -y skills add Speckledrattlesnakeinoculant470/claude-for-researchers --skill verify-citationAssembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.
2 things to look at
- no licenseNo license file was found in the repository. Code published without one is not open source by default, so using it at work is a question for whoever answers licensing questions where you are.
- 0 stars0 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.
SKILL.md
2.7 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it
/verify-citation
Verify that a paper exists before writing it as a citation.
Inspired by the citation-verification patterns in flonat/claude-research and Imbad0202/academic-research-skills.
When to use
Run /verify-citation before writing any new citation into a .tex, .bib,
or .md file. If the user asks you to "add a reference to X", run this skill
first — do not write the citation until verification passes.
Usage
/verify-citation "Author, Title, Year"
/verify-citation "the paper we discussed about spectral geometry"
/verify-citation (no argument — verify all citations in the last assistant turn)
Steps
Step 1 — Extract the citation. If an argument is given, use it. Otherwise, extract every paper reference from the last assistant turn (titles, author–year pairs, DOIs, arXiv IDs).
Step 2 — Search. For each citation, search at least two of:
- arXiv:
https://arxiv.org/search/?searchtype=all&query=<title+author> - Semantic Scholar:
https://api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1/paper/search?query=<title> - OpenAlex:
https://api.openalex.org/works?search=<title>
Use WebSearch or WebFetch to run the searches.
Step 3 — Report verdict.
| Result | Action |
|---|---|
| Found on 2+ sources, title and authors match | VERIFIED — write the citation |
| Found on 1 source, minor title variation | LIKELY — note the discrepancy, write with caution |
| Found on 0 sources, or title/author mismatch | UNVERIFIED — do NOT write the citation |
For UNVERIFIED: say "I cannot confirm this paper exists. Do you have a DOI or arXiv ID?" Do not invent an alternative. Do not write a citation that cannot be verified.
Step 4 — Write the citation (VERIFIED and LIKELY only). Use the metadata from the verified source (exact title, exact authors, correct year). Never reconstruct citation details from memory — use what the database returned.
Anti-patterns to avoid
- Do not assume a paper exists because the title sounds familiar.
- Do not cite a paper you read during training without verifying it still exists and the details are correct.
- Do not mix elements from different papers into one citation ("vibe citing" — the hardest fabrication to detect).
- Do not mark something VERIFIED if you only searched once and found one result with a slightly different title.
CLAUDE.md instruction
Add this to your project's CLAUDE.md to make this the default:
Never write a citation into any file without first running /verify-citation.
If you cannot confirm a paper exists on Semantic Scholar, arXiv, or OpenAlex,
say so explicitly and wait for a DOI or arXiv ID from me.