Suggested Citation Replacement

What is Suggested Citation Replacement?

When a citation can't be found — likely fabricated, mistyped, or referring to something that doesn't exist — CiteTrue can suggest 2–3 real papers that plausibly match the cited claim. You can use them to replace the bad citation, or as a starting point for finding the source you actually meant.

When you'll see it

Suggestions are offered when a citation comes back Not Found. Before that verdict, every citation is checked all the way through — tricky ones automatically get more data sources and more analysis — so suggestions only come into play once the original really can't be matched.

The button appears on Not Found cards. Clicking it runs the suggestion pipeline and reveals the candidates inline.

What the result looks like

You get up to 3 candidate papers, each with title, authors, year, and a link. Click the copy button to grab a citation in your preferred style, or the open-link button to read the source.

How it works

The suggestion engine extracts the topic, authors, and surrounding context from your original citation and searches for related work across academic databases. AI then ranks the candidates by how well they match the cited claim.

Tips

• Before requesting suggestions, look for an obvious typo in the Not Found citation — author, year or title. Fixing it and verifying again often recovers the original.
• The candidates are suggestions, not direct replacements — read each one to confirm it actually supports your argument before swapping it in.
• If none of the suggestions are right, the cited work might not exist at all. Consider revising the claim or finding a different source.