Understanding Verification Results
A guided tour of how verification works, every Assessment outcome (Authentic, Authentic with Notice, Unsure, Inauthentic with/without replacements, Invalid, Error, Exceeded), confidence scoring, and the stats bar at the top of the results list.
How Verification Works
Every citation goes through the same pipeline, which stops as soon as the citation is found. There's no mode to pick — every finished citation is a final result.
How it works
- Parses each citation into title / authors / year / DOI / URL, etc.
- Searches academic databases first and matches by exact metadata.
- If that doesn't settle it, the check continues with more data sources and more analysis.
- Most citations cost 1 credit. Tricky ones that need more data sources and more analysis can cost up to 5.
- If you run out of credits mid-check, citations already in progress still finish; the overage is deducted at your next credit reset.
Example: a tricky citation, found only after more data sources and more analysis:
[8] World Health Organization. (2023). World health statistics 2023: Monitoring health for the SDGs. WHO.
World health statistics 2023: monitoring health for the SDGs, sustainable development goals
World Health Organization
This citation was tricky and needed more data sources and more analysis.
Confidence Scores
Citations that resolve to a verdict (Authentic or Unsure) include a confidence score showing how closely the matched paper aligns with the citation.
Confirmed match — citation found and fully verified.
Found a candidate but couldn't fully confirm — manual review recommended.
No matching publication found — likely fabricated or mistyped.
Summary Statistics
At the top of the results list, a stats bar shows the total citation count plus colored dots for each status that needs attention. Authentic refs aren't dotted — their verdict is already clear from the card icon.
Authentic (Found)
The citation was found and matched in academic databases with high confidence.
[1] Vaswani, A., Shazeer, N., Parmar (2017). Attention is all you need.
A Vaswani, N Shazeer, N Parmar
What this means:
- The source exists in academic databases
- Author names, title, and year match the records
- You can click to view the original source
Authentic with Notice (Found with Discrepancies)
Found the paper, but a field (year/authors/URL) doesn't match — citation may be slightly wrong.
[2] Piketty, T. (2016). Capital in the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press.
Capital in the twenty-first century
T Piketty
- Source lists 2014; you cited 2016. Often a different edition or an online-first date rather than an error — please check which version you used.
Unsure (Needs Review)
The citation was found but some details don't match exactly. Manual verification recommended.
[3] Smith, J. (2019). The role of attention in transformer networks. Journal of ML Research.
Attention mechanisms in transformer architectures: a review
J Smith, L Wong
This citation was tricky and needed more data sources and more analysis.
Found a paper with a closely matching title, but the author list has an extra name (L Wong) — possibly a name collision or a different review on the same topic. Manual confirmation against the original is recommended.
AI agents aren't always 100% correct. If a result looks off, give it another try.
Common reasons:
- Minor differences in author name formatting
- Year or volume number mismatch
- Title has slight variations from the original
Inauthentic (Not Found)
No matching publication was found in academic databases or in the additional data sources. The citation is very likely fabricated, hallucinated, or mistyped. From here you can search for plausible replacements — candidates stay hidden behind a button, so credits are spent only when you ask for them.
[4] Akqdp, Z. (2020). Trnsfrmrs of Plzvktic Manifolds in Bzfrxk Lattices. Nature Press
This citation was tricky and needed more data sources and more analysis.
Searched multiple academic databases with various keyword + author + publisher combinations — no match. Both author name and title look highly irregular, suggesting an AI-hallucinated or mistyped fabricated citation.
AI agents aren't always 100% correct. If a result looks off, give it another try.
Possible causes:
- The citation may be fabricated or AI-generated
- Spelling errors in author names or title
- The source is not indexed in academic databases
- Very recent publication not yet indexed
Inauthentic (Not Found, with Suggested Replacements)
When a citation can't be found in the real world, CiteTrue searches for papers that plausibly match your intended meaning — so the result isn't just a dead end.
[5] Akqdp, Z. (2020). Trnsfrmrs of Plzvktic Manifolds in Bzfrxk Lattices. Nature Press
This citation was tricky and needed more data sources and more analysis.
Original citation matched no real paper (likely fabricated). Based on the citation context (keywords like Plzvktic Manifolds / Bzfrxk Lattices), the following related papers may be what you intended to cite.
AI agents aren't always 100% correct. If a result looks off, give it another try.
Invalid (Not a Citation)
The text isn't a citation — the verifier won't search. Use Find instead.
See chapter 3 for more details on the methodology.
Error (Verification Failed)
The verifier or a data source failed transiently — retry typically resolves.
[6] Garcia, M. (2021). Neural network optimization techniques. ACM Computing Surveys.
Server busy, please try again later.
Exceeded (Credits Ran Out)
Your credit balance ran out before this ref ran — top up to verify.
[7] Brown, K., Davis, R. (2022). Large-scale language model evaluation. NeurIPS.
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