RefSure

Checks the references on public arXiv and OpenReview papers against public databases. The developer receives nothing.

RefSure checks the references of a paper against public scholarly databases and tells you which ones deserve a second look. Open a paper on arXiv, or a public paper on OpenReview, and click the RefSure button in the toolbar. A side panel opens and the check starts. Results appear one by one, with the references that need a look listed first. Each reference gets one of six results, each with a reason you can read: - Verified: found, and the title, authors and year match. - Details differ: found a close match, but something differs, such as the year or the authors. - Wrong ID: the paper's DOI or arXiv ID (its permanent identifier) exists, but it belongs to a different paper than the title says. - Retracted: the matched paper has been formally retracted. - Not found: no close match in Crossref, arXiv, OpenReview or OpenAlex. Some real works (reports, theses, some proceedings) are not in these databases, so look it up by hand. - Can't check: not something RefSure can look up (a website or a book, say), or a lookup did not work. What you can do: - Filter the list by result and open any row to see the cited details next to the details found. - Follow a link to the matched paper or to the retraction notice. - Copy a plain-text report, or export CSV or JSON. - See small badges after each reference on arXiv HTML pages. - Reopen a paper you checked before and see its last results at once. History is optional and can be cleared. Where it looks: Crossref, arXiv, the public OpenReview search, OpenAlex and, when it answers, DBLP. You can add your own free OpenAlex key in the settings to raise OpenAlex's daily search budget. Good to know: - It takes time. The databases allow only a few requests per second (arXiv one every three seconds), so a paper with 40 references usually takes one to two minutes. Results stream in as they arrive. - Not found means "not in these databases". Reports, theses, company papers, books, some workshop proceedings and some older journals are often not indexed, so a real reference can come out as Not found. Look it up by hand before drawing a conclusion. - References read from a PDF can be misread. Those checks are labelled Beta. - Confidential OpenReview submissions are never checked. If a page is not clearly public, nothing is sent. - RefSure does not run in private windows. - No result is a guess: each comes from a database lookup or a stated rule, with a reason you can read. Privacy: when you run a check, the reference details of that paper (titles, authors, years, DOIs, arXiv IDs) are sent to the databases above. The developer receives nothing: no analytics, no ads, no account. Settings, history and cache stay on your device. Automatic checking is off by default.