Simple Reference Checker

This repository contains a simple pure Python script for checking academic references. It can be used to

• Verify if details are (generally) correct
• The reference exists or is probably hallucinated

Usage

1. Create a JSON file with the references
2. Run the main.py script and pass the JSON file

The JSON file should follow the Semantic Scholar API style. A simple way to create them is use an LLM, especially when parsing the references from a screenshot. A suggestion for a prompt is given in the prompt-reference-parser.md file.

Typical Workflow

The typical workflow would be something like this:

1. Take a screenshot of the reference section
2. Go to your favorite LLM, e.g., ChatGPT, copy&paste the prompt from prompt-reference-parser.md, attach the screenshot and submit the query.
3. Copy the output of the LLM to a file references.json
4. Run the script and pass the path to references.json as argument

python main.py path/to/references.json

Output

The script will go through each reference and compute a score between 0 and 1 based on the closest match it finds on Semantic Scholar. It will then output the information on the command line.